Patience Isn’t a Virtue — It’s a Practice pt.1

Patience is required for the nuanced development of your craft. Patience is required for taking in information in the most faithful way possible. Patience is required for crafting a work that resonates and contains all that we have to offer.

~Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

In most aspects of my life I would consider myself a fairly patient guy. I drive the speed limit and let people pass me all day, I watch long movies, I listen to other’s troubles, I once built a deck that almost took me a year — although, I’m not sure that is patience as much as I didn’t know what I was doing.

Either way, I’m familiar with patience.

Patience (noun): the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.

“The capacity”. This isn’t a personality trait or an inherited gene, it’s a capacity to be in control of your emotions and expectations.

If there’s one vital thing we are lacking right now in society is the ability to understand and appreciate the nuance of anything. I challenge you to take any major issue we are currently in conflict over and I promise you, the nuances of the conflict will be missed or glossed over. Even the scholars and journalists who are willing to do the research and report back to the masses must prepare their findings in a bite-sized form for us to even care to listen.

The idea of being patient while taking in information faithfully is lost on us. I receive the NYTimes “The Morning” every day, which is just a break down of the biggest news stories that are unfolding. It usually starts with a more thorough piece about one particular subject then goes into bullet points highlighting other stories. Sometimes I can’t get past that first story before scrolling down to the bite-sized headlines.

Translate this to the work of a creative, whatever your media of choice.

By losing patience with yourself, you lose patience with the work. You lose nuance and meaning; significance and development. Instead of being satisfied with the “headlines” of your work, strive to do a deep dive and explore the nuances of the work.

This can’t be done in one session of focus but in a series of choices everyday for an unforeseeable timeline. This is sometimes referred to as discipline or maybe — the acceptance of reality.

Can you accept that the work you might do now, is only a single step forward to future work? But when does it end? When do you get to do that one big piece of work that defines all of the previous steps? Never.

Anticipating good work is normal and probably even healthy for an artist, it might push you to always be wanting to learn and develop. Expecting great work without the slow development of your craft is delusional and will drive you crazy with jealousy of other’s work.

As a teenager, I was the “artsy” one. I would doodle a lot in my notebooks and even draw fake tattoos on my friends. In college, my drawing skills advanced with more rigorous professors and expectations. Now 10+ years from college, I have noticed that my drawing skills have become stagnate and with that, frustration.

Why would I expect my skills and the “nuance of my work” to have developed when I have not had the discipline to continue to develop them?

Why would I expect to craft work that resonates when I have not had patience to sit with the nuance of development?

Artist, it’s important to remember that future-you needs present-you to begin the work of patience and discipline in your craft. As the saying goes, “when is the best time to plant a tree? 20 Years ago. When is the second best time? Today.”