Talk:Patience

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This is an ambiguously titled page, eh? I expected to see something on the card game (which I'm not competent to write on, else I would). Koyaanis Qatsi

'S a good article though.  :-) Koyaanis Qatsi

  • Yeah, I should disambiguate the bloody thing, but I was lazy since no one else had done the card game yet. :) And thanks. :) -- April

This should really be split in two and made a disambig... - Orborde 05:05, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, now it's been split. But it was split a week ago, and still the splitting party hasn't looked at "What links here" and fixed the redirects appropriately. There was a Patience (operetta) ready and waiting for the split when it came, but User:Greekmythfan didn't use it. So I'm putting in a requested move. --Quuxplusone 23:35, 29 May 2005 (UTC)


The current definition of patience is clean and simple and does not reflect a point of view. The information about its role in various faiths is distinct from and does not qualify the definition. If there is commentary it should be added as discussion after the fact, without adding if, ands, or buts to the core concept.

Patience is not directly related to bullying. They are different concepts and the notion of standing up to a bully may have more to do with passive or non-violent resistance (of which patience is likely an element) than actually being core to the concept of patience. No definition of patience I seen references the concept of a bully. The basic definition should not fit an agenda. Check out the talk page on forgiveness for bully talk.

Patient is cited on the disambiguation page. Most folks would recognize patient as a sick person or the adjective form of the noun patience (I am patient / I have patience). To put it in this context as part of a definition is simply confusing. Wiggy! 00:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I can't see lack of complaining as an essential part of patience, the essential part is enduring hardships, for many different reasons. Any reference to patience as "enduring incoveniences without complaining"? 200.17.97.40 20:15, February 25, 2006

Well, I guess we're making some progress – and I suppose I should thank you for your patience ;) – given that the basic definition is pretty much intact.

Spend some time with the dictionary definitions. "Without complaint" is core to all of them. Spend some time doing a google search and look at some of the theologically based discussions. "Without complaint" is core to all of them, too. You just can't escape that as a part of patience regardless how you feel personally about it. The definition can't include that sort of POV if it's going to be valid. I can understand the struggle in a sense, because in looking over the googled stuff it's clear that the concept of patience is simple on one hand, but not necessarily easy to grasp and then put into effect.

I'm sorry, but your lawyer example is off base. The term "complaint" is used in a technical, legalistic sense there and has nothing to do with a discussion about patience which is a psychology-based topic according to the header, and has a strong (and legitimate) theological flavour to it as well as you can see from the follow up paragraphs. Lawyers file writs, too, but that doesn't mean they're buffing up the edges of crackers. The word sense is wrong and cripples the argument. And a lawyer without patience, regardless of the number of "complaints" he makes will not be particularly effective.

So if it's not about bullies, maybe the thing to do is follow up the basic stuff with an explanation of what it means to "lose one's patience" or go over the idea that there is a "limit to one's patience" and explore the idea of responding to a provocation in that way. That way the core definition can stand and that become part of the exloration of the basic concept. Wiggy! 01:16, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


With respect to the request for references:

"Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." Jean Jacques Rousseau Wiggy! 13:39, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Wiggy,

I went through your references and I insist that lack of complaining is not the chief simplest element of patience. The Cambrige dictionary includes: ...or annoyed in it. Encarta has no reference to complaining. In Ultralingua complaining is referred only in the third definition. Three of your own references against the first one.

My Lawyer example was only to show that one can use patience in order to complain in the right moment and form. What a Lawyer studies to know. If you dismiss a lawyer's complaint as not a complaining, but just as a specific legal term, than I can say that my bully victim can use his/her patience to complain in the right moment when he/she would best be heard by the negligent authority. Waiting the right momment to complain.

Including complaining in the definition is focussing in the resignation element of patience, but patience as a virtue has more to do with perseverance than to being quiet in face of incoveniences.

200.17.97.40 8 March 2006


The core definition stands intact, so I suppose that suits in a way. My essential point remains the same, however. Complaining is not part of patience and trying to integrate it into a basic definition is to place it out of context. The examples of the bully and the lawyer are non sequitur. Complaining is about the failure of patience.

As to my examples, that's a funny way of keeping score, and misses the point. "Without complaint" crops up often enough that it can't be dismissed with such superficial logic. Wiggy! 23:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


Well, I am just arguing definitions here. I thought the bully as counterexample, not as a non-sequitur. What you miss is that there is not an unique core definition, but many.

  • If you tell me to be patient, you may mean I must not complain at all, and I may understand I may be calm.
Point is: one definition is that patience does mean calm exclusively, and another that it does mean without complain exclusively, in a third it means both, etc. The definitions are so close but they are not the same, again, there are many meanings.
I don't mean to integrate complaining into patience, as in the miscomunication example above. One definition is in fact enduring incoveniences without complaining, but it is not the best core definition of patience. Simply because there is no such unique core definition.

200.17.97.40 13 March 2006

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