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Photographer Matthew McDermott shot this photo of Kiki, a 5-year-old Haitian boy rescued after being buried for eight days. The iconic image has been run in newspapers around the world. Photo courtesy of Polaris |
Comments (1)Cultivating Patience in an Instant World
By Beth IngallsPublished: February 11, 2010
Full Spectrum
“How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”
~ Shakespeare’s Othello
A compelling image from Haiti flashes across the TV screen and stops me in my tracks. A frail, 5-year-old boy with hollow eyes, coated in cement dust, is gently pulled from the wreckage of his devastated home in Port au Prince. As a NYC firefighter lifts him from the rubble and onlookers hold their collective breath, the boy suddenly turns to the waiting crowd, smiles broadly, and throws his pencil-thin arms out wide in a gesture of triumph. The crowd erupts in jubilant cheers.
Commentators immediately launch into banter about how the boy survived without food or water in total darkness for eight long days, and the discussion turns to physiology, but I think the answer is far simpler. The boy had patience — lots of it.
In this wired world of instant gratification, we want what we want when we want it. We’ve created fast food, automatic teller machines, instant messages, on-demand movies, express mail, jiffy lube, and a multitude of other conveniences to satisfy our desires. I wonder whether I would have the patience to survive under a crumbled building for one day, let alone a week or longer.
The little boy exemplifies the spirit of the Haitian people. They are among the poorest in the world and the least advanced technologically, but they could probably teach all of us a thing or two about patience. Over their country’s troubled history, they’ve become masters in cultivating their own special brand of it.
A recent pick of mine at the video store, the HBO miniseries “John Adams,” took my musings about patience to an even deeper level. As a history buff fascinated by the revolutionary period and one who shares Adams’ birthday as well, I thought I knew a lot about him. But the series touched on lesser-known aspects of his personal life that are rarely written about. After the trying times of separation and revolution of which he was such an integral part, Adams served in a diplomatic capacity in Europe away from his family, his native state of Massachusetts, and his newly born country for 11 long years. He nearly died during a bout of consumption in the Netherlands, struggled with loneliness and alienation in Britain, and worked tirelessly on difficult treaties in Paris while desperately longing for his home, family, and beloved wife. But he stayed and persevered. When he finally returned in 1788, his children were fully grown adults, barely recognizable to him as he made his way off the ship.
Contemplating Adams’ experience made me think that we throw around the term “public servant” pretty loosely these days. Adams defined the term — sacrificing years he might have spent with his wife and family to work instead on building the diplomatic foundations that would make the United States truly viable in the world. But the sacrifice was not his alone. His fiercely intelligent wife, Abigail, who probably could have been president herself in modern times, and his five children, also gave up a tremendous amount and at times struggled greatly in his absence.
There is much talk these days among pundits about how little Obama has accomplished in one year, yet in the same breath he’s criticized for taking on too much. These complaints irritate me. Trying to create an equitable health care system for 40 million uninsured Americans and millions more who are underinsured cannot be accomplished overnight. Turning a full-blown recession around also takes time. Ending a complex war is yet another daunting challenge, and the list goes on. One year in elected office is like a minute in real time. Why can’t we be more patient?
We like to recite the mantra, “patience is a virtue,” but do we really know what that means? Are we willing to tolerate delay and make significant sacrifices to create a better, more equitable world for all?
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