The Virtue of Patience

“Patience is a virtue!” So chants Evy in the 1999 film The Mummy after her brother Jonathan exhorts her to hurry along her search for the golden Book of the Living to stop the regenerating mummy who is after them. And I wonder, “What kind of answer is that? Hurry up, woman!”

I’ll be the first to admit that Patience and I are not friends. We’re barely acquainted. The one major thing I know about Patience is that I’m sorely lacking in it. Up to now, I have managed to gain a minuscule amount of it. I know I need it; I can identify exactly when Patience has and would do me good, but it is difficult to engage it at the right moment. I know too when Patience has been and would be useless to me; like if I were being chased by a living mummy and its mob of minions. I would not, in that crucial moment, sing jauntily: “Patience is a virtue!”

What is a virtue anyway? I turned to the ever-reliable Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11^th Edition) for the answer.

vir·tue \’vǝr-(͵)chü\ n [E vertu, virtu, fr. AF, fr. L virtut-, virtus

strength, manliness, virtue, fr. vir man – more at VIRILE] (13c)

1a : conformity to a standard of right: morality

b : a particular moral excellence

2 : pl an order of angels – see celestial hierarchy

3 : a beneficial quality or power of a thing

4 : manly strength or courage : valor

5 : a commendable quality or trait : merit

6 : a capacity to act : potency

7 : chastity esp. in a woman

Now, let us not get distracted by the sexist manly strength and womanly chastity. In the death-defying race against a creature bent on regenerating his mummified flesh, returning to life his centuries-dead beloved, and—oh yeah!—destroying the world, Patience is a virtue. Really! It’s “a particular moral excellence” that forces its bearer to help fight evil. And that “manly strength or courage” business? Yup, Patience is that, too. It’s even “a commendable quality or trait”! And most important in a mummy-chase situation, Patience is “a capacity to act.” When is it more important to do what’s needed than when saving your hide and all of humanity from a vengeful, not-quite-dead, very powerful mummy?

I’m with Jonathan on this one. When a mummy and his minions are closing in on you, speed is of the essence. Whether or not (cue Evy’s sing-song tone) “Patience is a virtue,” that is the time for a little haste not deliberation. Using Patience earlier would have been better, like when deciding whether to flee Egypt or defend it; or later, like when choosing to sacrifice oneself to save others.

So when is the right time to engage good ole patience in your life? Maybe the time is when you’re in line at a cashier behind a person who has apparently never written a check before. Or better yet, the time for Patience is when you grudgingly follow a car moving at 10mph below the speed limit until it approaches a yellow light and races through the intersection, leaving you smoldering at the red. You get the idea.

Patience may not always be emotionally satisfying, but I say remember how handy it is and use it... judiciously.