Can you hold it?
How might savlanut, or patience, have appeared on your spiritual curriculum in recent weeks?
I am prone to introduce some teaching by saying that when I teach Mussar, I am talking to myself and you are welcome to listen in. Here we go again.
At this moment, I am stuck in a situation that I have no power to resolve because it is not in my hands to do so. From a Mussar perspective, this is the classic definition of a situation that calls for savlanut [patience] and since this process is right in the forefront for me right now, I am sharing this experience
And I also have this topic in mind because since my book, “The Shabbat Effect,” was published in November, I’ve had Shabbat on my mind in every context and it turns out that Shabbat is a perfect time to practice patience. In fact, patience is an essential aspect of this day.
When we park our concerns and our activities at its threshold of the Sabbath on Friday evening, we are almost certain to find that the emotional concerns and anxieties we are so caught up with don’t cease just because we have stopped dealing with them in any practical way. It’s easier to close the file or shut off the computer than it is to stop thinking about something that is worrying or even threatening us. But how does that call for patience?
Our worries and concerns are strong feelings that make us very uncomfortable, and these sharp and often painful inner experiences prompt us to seek relief. How? By taking action immediately. But if we are honouring Shabbat, then we don’t have the means at our disposal to take those sorts of actions on that holy day, and so we find ourselves in a situation that is very parallel to being stuck in a car that is stopped at a railway crossing while an endless train slowly creeps past.
What to do? Stick your head out the window and yell at the train? Honk the horn? Yell at the person in the passenger seat that we should have gone the other way?
None of that is productive. Situations that force us to wait because the agenda is not in our control are calling on us to focus inward on the task of creating an inner vessel that can hold those feelings without having them push us into useless or even foolish action. In Hebrew, that sort of vessel is called a kli kibul, a receptacle. Forming that inner vessel is the practice of patience.
In Hebrew, the word for patience is savlanut. Its root, the three letters samech-lamed nun, refers to “suffering.” But the same root gives rise to the word sabal — a porter who carries heavy loads. We learn from bringing together these two meanings that patience is the act of building or strengthening an inner vessel that can carry a heavy emotional burden without a need to cast them off or act them out.
Like all the activities we take on in a Shabbat practice, building an inner vessel for patience serves the moment and much beyond. A situation that calls on us to practice patience strengthens that middah, and we find that we have earned a dividend of patience that pays off in many other areas of our lives as well.