(by Carlos Bernardo Gonzalez Pecotche*)
"One could say that everybody knows that the human being is
basically impatient. This is one of the deficiencies of his character which
makes it most difficult and even impossible for him to achieve any progress in
his pursuit of self-betterment.
He, who is influenced by impatience, and feels diminished at
the thought of incapability and discouragement, annihilates his own strength.
Under these conditions, the struggle intensifies and once he is defeated, it
becomes easy to lapse into despair. This is what happens to the impatient, to
those who have not learned to coordinate their inner forces to face adversity,
which at every moment presents a new field for battle.
Patience, regarded as a factor of success in the useful
application of effort, must not be restricted in its dynamic expression if one wishes
to obtain, through it, that which every circumstance demands as a tribute of
time. To be able to appreciate this, it is necessary to understand clearly that
patience is not a virtue when it appears in the form of passivity, as is the
case when man adopts the attitude of waiting for things to be solved all by
themselves, expecting Providence to smile on him and, as a reward for his
constancy in waiting without doing anything, to present him with that which
should be the product of reasoning and effort.
Patience, as a virtue, must be active and conscious. To
endow it with these qualities, it is necessary to establish an order in the
sequence of the achievements, since the structuring of a plan must precede the
patient and intelligent use of the effort which must participate in the
execution of this plan. Patience must stay with the individual until the final
result is attained, because it is the energy that sustains the effort until its
successful culmination.
We have stated repeatedly that patience creates the capacity
to understand time. It will be understood, of course, that we have referred to
the patience of those who know how to wait. In other words, the greater our
comprehension of its value, the greater will be the effectiveness with which
time serves us, giving us, on the other hand, a serenity of spirit not known by
the impatient person.
The individual who practices patience under the beneficial
influence of his conscience knows that nothing comes to an end for him. The
very opposite happens to a person who, lacking patience, puts an end all by
himself to that which he was not supposed to exclude from his possibilities. To
the former, everything can continue to exist in his reasoning during the time
required to achieve his objective; to the latter, all continuity ceases.
It can be justifiably said that the secret of the successes
that man has been able to obtain in his conquest of goodness has resided in the
active patience manifested in the perseverance, in the uninterrupted work, in
the devotion, and also in that conscious faith which gradually takes root in
the soul, and is upheld by his own verifications."
*Excerpt from the book "Logosophy Science and Method." Originally published in Spanish. Official Translation.
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