A very close of friend of mine asked if “a woman without patience has no virtue”.

At first, I thought it sounded judgemental and rude but then, my instincts got to work. Just this assumption or thought that I came up with was as a result of my lack of patience to digest what the sentence meant. Does it now imply I have no virtue?

No, it doesn’t but rather, it meant I still have a long way to go in putting efforts to improve the extent to which my patience can go. This baffled me a lot!

Patience, as it is, can only be learnt overtime but not perfected as since we are human. There would be some life events that would render us speechless enough to reduce the justifications of our actions. Come to think of it: patience is exhibited in our day-to-day activities.

For instance, when we wake up to start the day, we need patience to make supplications to our Lord which can’t be rushed regardless of how late we might be for other appointments. When we cook, it requires a lot of patience to put all ingredients together regardless of how hungry we could be to avoid even more unsatisfactory feelings. All these implies that we all have patience as one form or another- it’s been used highly in our day-to-day activities.

The difference could be the extent to which we are willing to endure and persevere. As though, we know that to get what we want or need, we can only be different on the level of our patience but the act can’t be perfected. As we push ourselves beyond limits of our patience, we are teaching ourselves to learn how to improve on our endurance level.

What about righteousness, love, goodness, faith, purity, morality, character, generosity, humbleness, kindness and many more? Are these not virtues as well?

If an individual has one or more of these, what does that make them? If such individual has all these put together and lacks patience, does that render them not human?

This leads to the conclusion that all the other good/positive traits in life require patience for it to grow positively. You can’t be generous and humble without having patience.

As stated in the Holy Quran (there are a lot of verses of the Quran that deliberated on patience but I will make use of two here)

Suratul Al’Imran (Q3:300);

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اصْبِرُوا وَصَابِرُوا وَرَابِطُوا وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ

Suratul Al-Anfal (Q8:46);

وَأَطِيعُوا اللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُ وَلَا تَنَازَعُوا فَتَفْشَلُوا وَتَذْهَبَ رِيحُكُمْ ۖ وَاصْبِرُوا ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَ الصَّابِرِينَ

And obey Allah and His Messenger, and do not dispute and [thus] lose courage and [then] your strength would depart; and be patient. Indeed, Allah is with the patient.

Our Faith need a high level of patience to be practiced daily with the right intention. Being connected and close to Allah needs daily devotion and reflection which of course all depends on patience. And as said in the Quran, those who are patients are the companion of Allah.

Not only that, it is highly urged from us to be optimistic, calm and hopeful because those who has patience are always successful in whatever it may be they lay hands into or have their mind on.

This led me to agreeing with the saying that “A woman without patience has no virtue”. Of course this doesn’t exclude the men as well.

Reposted with Permission from Sekinat