President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, speaking to the Priesthood Session during the April 2010 conference, spoke of the importance of patience, he said, “The lessons we learn from patience will cultivate our character, lift our lives, and heighten our happiness.” He went on to say, “Patience the ability to put our desires on hold for a time is a precious and rare virtue. We want what we want, and we want it now. Therefore, the very idea of patience may seem unpleasant and, at times, bitter. Nevertheless, without patience, we cannot please God; we cannot become perfect. Indeed, patience is a purifying process that refines understanding, deepens happiness, focuses action, and offers hope for peace.”
During my working years, I was an administrator at a university and had a fairly heavy administrative load. Even though I had always felt that I could control my emotions and that I was a fairly patient person, I came to find out that it wasn’t so. I had a heart attack as a young fifty two year old man, reportedly due to stress. After five bypasses and a couple weeks recovering, I came back to work with a whole new approach to my assignments. I realized my easygoing appearance and patience had been a facade. Underneath I had been anxious and stressed out. That experience made me conscience of how I was reacting to things and to people emotionally. Someone said, “Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off.”
And that is precisely what I had to learn how to do, because the blasting off part was something that apparently had been taking place inside of me. Problem solving, which is stressful for many, has always been a favorite challenge of mine, and I always went at it with perseverance, but not always with patience. John Quincy Adams said, “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” Obviously putting the two together is a winning combination.
The majority of conflicts I have been aware of in this life have been initiated by the impatient. We will all live a much more calm and happy existence if we can learn patience.
In the 1960s, a professor at Stanford University began a modest experiment testing the willpower of four-year-old children. He placed before each of them a large marshmallow and then told them they could eat it right away or, if they waited for 15 minutes, they could have two marshmallows. He then left the children alone and watched what happened behind a two-way mirror. Some of the children ate the marshmallow immediately; some could wait only a few minutes before giving in to temptation. Only 30 percent were able to wait. It was a mildly interesting experiment, and the professor moved on to other areas of research, for, in his own words, “there are only so many things you can do with kids trying not to eat marshmallows.” But as time went on, he kept track of the children and began to notice an interesting correlation: the children who could not wait struggled later in life and had more behavioral problems, while those who waited tended to be more positive and better motivated, have higher grades and incomes, and have healthier relationships. What started as a simple experiment with children and marshmallows became a landmark study suggesting that the ability to wait—to be patient— was a key character trait that might predict later success in life.
In the Lord’s service both patience and long suffering are a necessary combination to be able to help move the Lord’s work forward. Missionary work requires a lot of patience, and when young men and women are sent out patience is probably the hardest, if not the most important, lesson they must learn. When the sons of Mosiah went out as missionaries to the Lamanites, the Lord instructed them, “Go forth among the Lamanites, thy brethren, and establish my word; yet ye shall be patient in long-suffering and afflictions, that ye may show forth good examples unto them in me, and I will make an instrument of thee in my hands unto the salvation of many souls. And it came to pass that the hearts of the sons of Mosiah, and also those who were with them, took courage to go forth unto the Lamanites to declare unto them the word of God.” (Alma 17:11–12) The Lamanites were a fearsome people and before any teaching could be done they had to establish themselves. They essentially had to be adopted by the people, and that would take time. In their day, everything took longer to do, whether it be travel, preparing meals, or taking care of a persons every day needs. They planned on this mission to be a long term effort, in fact they were among the Lamanites 14 years. Because they did learn patience, as they were counseled by the Lord, they were successful in baptizing many hundreds of the Lamanite people.
Today a teaching missionary is called for two years and blessed are those who learn patience while teaching within that short period of time. Our young people are raised in a society when everything has to be done now. They are used to having access to nearly everything in the world in a matter of a moments via the Internet. Paul Sweeney asked, “How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?” We must all learn patience because as President Uchtdorf has said, “Nevertheless, without patience, we cannot please God; we cannot become perfect. Indeed, patience is a purifying process that refines understanding, deepens happiness, focuses action, and offers hope for peace.” And paraphrasing Alma, ‘Go forth among the gentiles, thy brethren, and establish my word; yet be patient in long-suffering and afflictions…show forth good examples unto them in me…’ Patience and being a good example are two of the most effective personality traits a servant of the Most High can learn. In fact they are a winning combination of traits for success in all walks of life.