Patience – And What It Means In The Life of the Believer

Here I read the latest article from my blog on the concept of PATIENCE or SABR in Arabic.

The concept of patience is typically limited merely to meanings connected with enduring hardship; for me, it means much more than that.

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Types of patience
There exists a stoical patience; the ability to meet the vicissitudes of life with equanimity. And – to be sure – remaining calm in the face of adversity is an aspect of what I have learned patience to be; but it is an incomplete definition.

Basically, it is too passive.

A fuller definition – for me at least – contains other aspects: fortitude (a resilience or hardiness); persistence (just doggedly carrying on); old fashioned hard work; good habits; and unflagging initiative.

I don’t believe anyone is born patient. I certainly wasn’t. And although a good example of patience in one’s father or other primary influencers in childhood is a strong advantage, no-one can learn patience for us or give it to us. It is earned as well as learned.

The problem is that there is no pleasant and easy way to learn it. It is by nature unpleasant. It is the itch you can’t scratch – borne long enough – which turns the grain of sand into a pearl.

But the work aspect of patience is lost by many. Whole swathes of my work since I began this project have required a stubborn, prosaic persistence. For example, I needed to replace all the footnote numbers with small superscript circles and enter the reference number as end notes. I repeated this painstaking, boring process – requiring exactitude and zero creativity – over 9,000 times. This took three full weeks of 14-hour days. That’s approximately 300 hours of adding circles.

And there have been many such tasks of comparable mind-numbing banality.

Of course, there are breakthroughs and insights as well – my work on the muqaṭṭaʾāt being an obvious case in point – but ṣabr has been for me 90% perspiration and only 10% inspiration.

Inspiration
Inspiration is overrated. Beethoven and Mozart were incomparable composers not because they were moved to do great work, but because they were at their desks every morning at the same time.

Isaac Asimov – the famously prodigious writer – kept to the same writing process all his career.

Asimov also attributed his success to the fact that he simply did not care what the critics said about him.

Asimov had ṣabr.

It is this creative, dogged type of habit – something which generates real output – that gets to the heart of what ṣabr means to me.

These three men – Beethoven, Mozart and Asimov – were all creative; they were productive. Yet if they had possessed ṣabr in the way most Muslims conceive of the term, they would have endured their hardships well enough – but they would have produced nothing.

The Qur’anic conception of ṣabr hints strongly – to my mind at least – at the generative form of patience, not the passive form.

Let us consider 10:109 as an example:

And follow thou what thou art instructed.
And be thou patient until God judges.
And he is the best of judges. (10:109)

Here, the prophet is exhorted to keep busy doing what he is commissioned to do; not simply to put up with hardship. He is called to be active, innovative, dynamic – for that is what following what God has instructed us entails.

And be thou patient
For God suffers not to be lost the reward of the doers of good. (11:115)

Here, again, the emphasis is on action: the reward of the doers of good. This is patience.

And be thou patient.
The promise of God is true.
And let not those who are not certain sway thee. (30:60)

Not everything is – or should be – fun and easy. Some things require work and persistence, they just do. And pretending otherwise is the path of the weak and foolish.

Reap the rewards
As the weeks and months pass and you keep sticking to the field you have decided to dig, you will start to become patient. And the more you dig your field – the more you invest your blood, sweat and tears in it – the more that ground becomes yours, and the less willing you will be to give it up.

And by the time the first shoots of the fruits of your labours begin to stick their heads above the soil, surrendering your patch of ground will be unthinkable.

I am grateful to God that I found my field and had the wit to start digging it. God’s earth is wide, and we are not all here to dig the same bit of it.

Find the bit you are meant to work; start working it and don’t stop until you see your fruits – and ṣabr will come of itself.

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