/have a little patience

A phrase that is ubiquitous, be it while cooking a dum biriyani, waiting for the result of a test (scholastic or biological), or standing in the queue of a public office. A lot has been said about this agency of endurance. One of my favorites is a line I read in a blog somewhere on the internet, “The courage to start. The discipline to focus. The confidence to figure it out. The patience to know progress is not always visible. The persistence to keep going, even on the bad days. That’s the formula.” I think this quote translates the gestalt of the phrase used as the title of this musing. It is an essential ingredient that renders all the other variables in the equation almost vain if not exercised with the intensity of worship. Be it anything, I believe patience is the key.

Take photography for example. Courage gets you to go on an expedition in a foreign land. Discipline gets you to the location at the right time. Confidence in your tracking abilities lets you know that the framing is apt. But it’s the patience that holds you from getting trigger-happy, clicking a photo, and moving on. It is the thing that gets you the shot—the water as smooth as silk; the infant sun glowing right on the third quarter of the grid; the jagged mountain standing tall in the center, and the subject slowly nudging towards it to complete the frame. Moreover, patience’s cousin, persistence, is what got you here even though you had missed so many opportunities before.

So I guess what they say is right, all you need to have, is a little patience.

Created at Interlaken featuring Lake Thun and the mighty duck at around 6 AM, waiting for all of the elements to align for almost 20 minutes at the same spot.