What Is This Thing Called Patience?

What exactly is it? That I have felt for some time myself to be patient has suddenly become irrelevant. There is no such feeling within me any longer, and I do not understand how such a sudden change could have taken place so. Maybe it is because patience is a supremely rationalized action, and the impetus due to which I am now driven is in no way rational; it is at its very essence an impetus of momentum, not controlled but mollified, a motion which is ridden and not bridled.

And yet, though I no longer feel the presence of patience within me any longer, still I appreciate its importance to my current predicament. Before when I had no such need for patience, it was by my estimate surely present in large quantities. Now that the hour has struck midnight, my reserves become suddenly sparse, either due to a disproportionate increase in demand, or due to a quick depletion of stock. It is not important which, for the feeling which clouds my mind is not one which knows absolutes; it actively accommodates to become relatively infinite in comparison to my stock of patience regardless of whichever measure I choose to evaluate it.

This now is the feeling that one has when faced with a decision which can be made at any time, where the decision is this: a man is attempting to drive himself to the beach. The road on which he drives is high up on a mountainside slope traveling alongside the beach, which is far below. Should the man wish, he can at any moment quickly jerk his steering wheel and enter into the steeply sloped grassy plain which sweeps down to the shore, a path which will allow him to reach his destination much more quickly, yet carries incredible risk, perhaps of overturning his vehicle. Eventually the road will reach the sea, but will the sun have yet to set?

Truly, the man's greatest obstacle is not the length of the road, nor the angle of the slope, nor the path of the sun. The man's greatest obstacle is his own doubt in any of these factors, the lack of belief, of faith, that any of these routes will lead him down to the sand. That he is pained in either choice is a clear indication of his exaggerated discomfort with the consequence of each, his preoccupation with a negative result that drives him to indecision. He is himself destroyed by a decision for which either path would have allowed him life.

Those who await him on the shore also suffer, for they perhaps are patient, and deep with faith. They do not suffer knowingly, for it is not that stones are showered upon their heads, but rather that bread is not given to them freely.

My lack of patience is then not the issue at hand. Rather, it is my dissatisfaction with this lack of patience. Either to have, or have not, one ought to be content regardless. I have instead found frustration which arises not even from the situation, but from my own volition. To agonize yet be paralyzed, to contemplate yet stagnate, this is my current state.