The old saying goes: ‘Patience is a virtue.’ But what about these other, less well-known takes on the matter: ‘Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour.’ - Ovid

‘Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.’ – Helen Keller

And my personal favorite: ‘Beware the fury of a patient man.’ - John Dryden

What’s all the fuss about patience? It depends entirely upon your definition of the word. For some, the practice of patience is about not wishing away the moment for something that has yet to come. It’s the practice of being fully present right now, rather than getting swept away in the thoughts of the future.

For others, patience becomes a practice of setting sights on some distant goal, hunkering down, and waiting for it.

If this is your version of patience, I encourage you to stop waiting and start living your life right now! The irony is that if you practice the latter version, the goal for which you are being so patient becomes excessively important, overshadowing all the wonders in your life right now.

Patience in its most true form could more accurately be called Mindfulness. It’s an understanding that your life is a series of moments and that the only one you can actually do anything about is the one you’re currently experiencing. As you practice patience or mindfulness, you may often notice your mind wrestling to get away from this moment because it’s not nearly as exciting or stimulating as the ones that you imagine and dream up.

If we’re truly to embody patience, we must learn to control these fluctuations of our restless minds, this urge we feel to anticipate or to reminisce, to do all kinds of mental gymnastics that take us out of the moment we’re currently living in. Your yoga practice is the perfect testing ground for this practice. At first it can be scary to think about changing the way you think. You may feel that such a change will cause you to feel unprepared for the future, or will make you forget your past. But the true challenge will come when you actually manage to derail the past- or future- train for a moment and you see where you actually are: right here. Then you understand that all you have in your whole life is this moment right now. Heavy stuff!

But this is what it means to be alive, to experience your life as it comes rather than to live within the world of your thoughts. Being present need not replace planning for the future; in fact, the practice of being fully present is the best preparation for anything that can come your way. Many of us find ourselves idly imagining how a situation will play out, thinking that this prepares us for the future. In fact, daydreaming and anticipating future events is not productive and is another escape. As you practice and grow more skilled at staying in the now, you’ll find yourself making plans for the future when the time is right, and you’ll probably discover that you need not spend nearly as much time on planning as you would have thought.

As your yoga teacher reminds you to come back to your breath, to let go of what you did before you came to class and to set aside what you’ll do after, you have an opportunity to practice (in small doses) freeing yourself from the endless parade of thoughts that take you out of the moment. It’s certainly not an easy practice, but you’ll find that as you consistently come back to your breath, come back to right now, the small moments of your life take on a richness that you were previously unable to see. Every moment is interesting and unique because it is you interacting with your world, right now, and it can never be repeated.

So have patience with yourself as you practice, but abandon this myth of false patience, this habit we have of postponing our lives, of looking always either forward or backwards, but never where we are right now. Take a deep breath, open your eyes, and experience the richness of now!