Bonding
There are people in this world who cannot bond. They wander from occupation to occupation or from relationship to relationship never able to find themselves in anything.
People who run here and there trying to find themselves rarely find anything of value. Why is this? It's because these people lack an essential quality for all good discovery-patience. To discover anything of value requires extreme care and patience.
Patience is the core ability of those who are able to bond. Two people can come from the same background--one can bond and one cannot. One is able to find stability in both marriage and occupation and the other is not. Why is it that one person can bond, but the other, who shares the same background and experiences, cannot?
In a word, patience. When you become patient with something, you are able to bond with that something. When you are extremely patient with a person, you are as likely as not a good candidate for a long-term friendship with that person. Patience endures all for the greater reward that comes to those who have great staying power in all things.
Patience is also the key to a long and illustrious career. Observe with care a person who is very good at what they do. That person has the ability to stick with something. They have the ability to stick with something long enough for that something to prove rewarding.
An attitude of patience and reverence is the key to using the imagination properly. Establish a mood of patience and it is easy to have respect and reverence for people and things. Reverence and respect are quite simply the ability to stay with something long enough in your imagination and your attention to discover the value there.
When you fix your attention, your imagination is able to go far beyond the superficial layers of a person or thing into deeper layers.
What is the ability to bond? It is the ability to stay with a person or thing in the imagination. The background mood for all such staying power is patience.
When you are patient, you forgive easily. A patient person will bond with the eternal qualities found in a friendship and will forgive all temporary character faults that obscure the view. When you view people with your imaginative eye and with patience, you see people clearly for who they really are.
©Edward Abbott 2002-2005