Patience

Jackie and I are enrolled in a Mussar class. It’s a Jewish spiritual practice that focuses on living a meaningful life.

Human traits like humility and patience are studied to see how we stack up. We get tools that include readings, meditation, journaling, and instruction, all designed to challenge and improve ourselves. Or at least understand what might be standing in our way. Accompanying humility and patience in this parade of traits are the usual ones, gratitude, silence, and generosity. Others are a bit more obtuse, like order and equanimity.

Mussar was developed in Lithuania as a group enterprise in the 1800’s. Many of the writings included come from the pens of Rabbis living then and earlier. Adopting Mussar means a lifetime of study leading to awareness, wisdom, and transformation.

In my case, I’ll be lucky to get through the next six weeks.

Our Mussar classmates number 10, nearly all are members of our temple. We meet via Zoom every two weeks and spend two hours discussing this week’s trait. The alternate weeks are devoted to private study and meetings with our team partner. My teammate is Jackie.

It can be administratively complex, and I spend way too much time trying to keep my traits straight. For example, we could be knee-deep in humility while prepping for patience. Or was it the other way around?

In one of the exercises, I pick a point on a scale that identifies how I rate myself on a given trait. For example, regarding humility, am I humble or more like Vladimir Putin? But am I so humble that I’m apathetic, or do I hog the limelight like Donald Trump?

Patience has two faces. It can mean how long you’ll wait for a bus on an ice-cold morning on a Chicago street corner before throwing yourself into oncoming traffic. Or it can mean how well you accept an irreversible outcome without liking it, like the trip to the hospital after you’ve been hit by that silent Tesla.

I’ve always thought of myself as a patient person. At least on the outside. I sit in library foundation board meetings, hoping for the end of time. I remain respectful but occasionally find myself muttering silently while others happily contribute their thoughts to the festivities. Age probably has something to do with it. Like my irreversibly thinning skin that belies my 82 years, my tolerance has its limits.

My eyes scan the room and I often wonder what others are thinking; are they as impatient as I am? Why doesn’t some colleague say, “Ok, that’s enough. We shouldn’t even be discussing this trivial item, much less interfering with my TV schedule. Let’s move on.” And then I think, why am I not saying this? Is it an overabundance of patience? Am I alone in my reverie? Or am I just a wuss?

I watch the meeting room wall clock move so slowly that I think an evil deity has made it run backwards. I calculate the time remaining before the meeting’s scheduled conclusion and worry that there is too much to cover in the remaining minutes. As we get closer to closure, I begin to congratulate myself for lasting this long without saying anything disruptive. I maintain my composure…and then, having reached my biblical limit, I react by saying something that I will regret immediately after I’ve said it.

One of Mussar’s tactics in dealing with a lack of patience, and the spewing of regretful thoughts, is to widen the space between anticipating your upcoming impatience and the actual act itself. This time-out provides a theoretical buffer zone in which one can reconsider doing something stupid. This tactic, however, also requires patience. It can lead to years of rabbinic study in a quest to solve this conundrum. The product of that study then leads to more study and consequentially an increase in required rabbinic patience.

But we are not all Rabbis. I demonstrated this fact last Sunday as Jackie and I worked on our taxes. Until our marriage, Jackie used a local bookkeeping service to record her monthly transactions and complete her tax returns. I had originally thought, “How much work can that be? My stuff surely is more voluminous and certainly more complex.”

I was wrong on both counts. Multiple employers, renting her house, and singlehandedly raising the GNP with the purchase of a myriad of personal care products and services, proved challenging.

I had lots of questions. I began to feel the pressure of meeting the IRS filing deadline. I used my new Mussar patience tactic and widened the space between anticipation and action. I silently analyzed my situation and quietly began with, “Sweetheart, I hate to interrupt your cell phone conversation about your girlfriend’s marital woes, but could you please tell me what this charge is for? I would be ever so grateful.”

As the call droned on and the unanswered questions mounted, my patience buffer zone grew smaller. Like the library clock on the wall, I had reached my allotted patience time. And I said, “If you would only stop yakking with your neurotic girlfriend, I could finish this inquisition and get back to playing my ukulele. I’ve got a life too, ya know.”

Wrong. Definitely not in the Mussar playbook. Like the speed of light, I instantly regretted what I had said. Especially the “ya know.”

So, I did the only thing I could do.

I humbled myself. A lot.