Lenten reflections from a Suffolk Smallholding - 6

Many smallholding and gardening activities require patience. Much of this concerns waiting for things that you want to happen. Sowing seeds and waiting for them to geminate. Or planting a sapling in the hope that one day it will become a mature tree. Or putting a ram to tup some ewes and waiting five months for them to deliver new lambs. All these sorts of things require patience. Living by the seasons helps to teach patience.

But patience also concerns how we respond to frustration. Patience in this sense is more to do with the extent an individual can wait calmly in the face of frustrating situations or adversity. Significant life events  can become a source of frustration. But daily life is also inevitably full of micro-frustrations: seedlings that die in the frost, being stuck in a traffic jam, a long queue at the post office, a call handler not grasping your query,  and so on. In the days of travelling on the Central Line rush hour, I recall (alas, more than once) the groans and outright swearing from passengers when we were asked to disembark because further up the line someone had "fallen under a train".  

The danger is responding to such frustrations in an over-aroused way, resulting in the release of stress hormones. That doesn't feel good. (And it can potentially make others feel bad too whether they 'deserve' it or not). Its not good for your physical health either. Patience is something worth cultivating.

It is a mistake to equate patience with passivity or making you vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Patience can be active and potentially a positive choice to deal with frustration in healthy ways. Possessing the capacity to exercise such a choice can, indeed, be liberating. In contrast, feelings of helpless frustration can lead to dissatisfaction and also inhibit more positive responses.

Professor of Psychiatry Judith Orloff tries to cultivate patience with her patients. She suggests the following  exercise to help practice patience and counter frustration. Join a long, slow-moving line to wait in. Perhaps in the grocery store, bank, or post office. Instead of getting irritated or pushy, take a deep breath and tell yourself, “I’m going to wait peacefully and enjoy the pause.” Meanwhile, try to empathize with the overwrought cashier. Smile and say a few nice words to the other beleaguered people in line. Use the time to daydream; take a vacation from work or other obligations. Notice the stress release you feel and how your body relaxes. Lines are an excellent testing ground for patience. Practicing patience will help you dissipate stress and give you a choice about how you respond to disappointment and frustration. When you can stay calm, centered, and not act rashly out of frustration, all areas of your life will improve.

Back to smallholding, gardening, living by the seasons and learning lessons from Nature. Here is a well-known poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning which contrasts human frustrations with unchanging Nature and the ways it can "Sing through our sighing...". It seems to finish with a prayer.

Patience Taught by Nature

 “O Dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”

And still the generations of the birds

Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds

Serenely live while we are keeping strife

With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife

Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds

Unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards

Unweary sweep: hills watch, unworn; and rife

Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees,

To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass

In their old glory. O thou God of old!

Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these;—

But so much patience, as a blade of grass

Grows by contented through the heat and cold.

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Nicotiana sylvestris seedlings in a 4" pot.
By the end of the summer they will be
5 feet high with 4" long white trumpet
flowers. Worth waiting for!