5 reflections that remind us of the importance of knowing how to wait

Knowing how to wait is a virtue that allows you to face bad times with a good attitude. Below, we present the best phrases that will allow you to value this skill more.

Knowing how to wait is a true art. Whoever has developed this talent proves that he has reached an important degree of personal evolution. It involves self-control, tolerance for frustration, temperance and the ability to see reality in perspective.

When we come into the world we are the complete opposite. The baby does not postpone satisfaction of your needs. He wants what he desires and asks for to be delivered to him instantly. If she doesn’t get it, she becomes desperate and bursts into tears.

Hence knowing how to wait is a conquest that is only achieved with time, experience and patient work with oneself. It is a great virtue that protects and strengthens in the face of adversity. That allows you to overcome bad times with an excellent attitude. The great thinkers know all this and that is why they have left us wonderful maxims about it. These are some of them.

“He who does not desire does not get frustrated. And whoever is not frustrated is not debased. Thus, the true wise man waits in stillness, while everything happens and desires do not rule. Thus peace and harmony take place and the world follows its natural course”.

-Lao Tse-

1. The pleasure of knowing how to wait

If anyone cultivates the art of knowing how to wait, it is hunters and fishermen. That is why one of Joseph Antoine René Joubert’s phrases says: “Pleasure hunting is the pleasure of waiting”. As you can see, in this case waiting is not talked about as a sacrifice, but rather as something that brings satisfaction.

Read Also: 3 approaches to the study of personality

The hunter’s wait is an active wait. Be part of the challenge What does it mean to be able to capture your prey?. The only way to catch her is to give her time to come out of hiding and be in a position where he can act.

The same thing happens with fishermen. Ultimately it is a metaphor for life. The right moment is not all the moments. We have to wait for him and know how to act when it arises.

2. The best way to wait

This is a phrase by Gustave Flaubert and it says the following: “You have to wait when you are desperate and walk when expected”. That is precisely the paradox that knowing how to wait implies. It doesn’t mean passivity, just moving in the right direction.

Active waiting has to do with not stopping simply to watch time pass. Rather, it is related to be aware that it is important to continue moving forwardeven if that advance is limited or does not offer exactly what we are looking for immediately.

3. Better not to get ahead of yourself

Part of the art of knowing how to wait is not to place yourself in mental scenarios that are in the future., especially when it has to do with possible, but not present, problems. Many times we wear ourselves out trying to solve problems that have not even arisen.

Something like this is what Julia Navarro reminds us when she says: “When we get to that river we will talk about that bridge”. Returning to the metaphor, we never know if we are really going to reach that river. We may never do it, but we spend a lot of time and a lot of life building that bridge in our imagination.

4. Wait with hope

This quote from Samuel Johnson says: “It is necessary to wait, although hope must always be frustrated, because Hope itself is a joy, and its failures, however frequent, are less horrible than its extinction.”.

5. Everything comes…

This is one of the simplest, but also most powerful phrases on the topic of waiting. Says the following: “Everything comes to those who know how to wait”. The author of this maxim was Henry W. Longfellow. He summarized in a single sentence everything that can be said about the art of knowing how to wait.

Many times we don’t get what we want because we don’t persevere long enough. Sometimes it takes time and sometimes this time is considerable.. This long wait may lead us to rush to act, or to abandon the objective prematurely. We forget that the more we persevere, the more the chances of getting what we are looking for increase.

Knowing how to wait has to do with maturity, with balance, with character. It is one of the most difficult achievements in life, but also one of the sweetest and most enriching. He who knows how to wait, he also knows how to live.