Patience and Courage - Byju Joseph

Patience and Courage are connected to each other in some ways. We need the courage to be patient. At the same time patience leads us to be courageous. If we analyse the social life at the present time we can understand that we are losing the value of patience day by day. Patience is the way to simplicity and it is the key to success. Beyond all discoveries, inventions, productions or any attempts, there must be patience and hard work for many days. It is time-consuming. In the present world, nobody is ready to waste precious time.

The world is running fast with technologies and everything is available instantly. Everyone is influenced by the scenario and getting addicted to consumerism.  We are also acquiring the tendency to gain without pain. We are not thinking of the consequences and thus we are becoming jealousy and impatient. Impatience may lead to dangerous situations. We need to stand courageously and patiently to work against the present-day issues that we face. We need to overcome them effectively and to do maximum for the betterment of the coming generations.

Patience depends on our self-discipline and self-control while courage depends on our confidence. Confidence depends on our knowledge. It is very clear that patience and courage together make success. There are many such examples which are inspiring everyone. Albert Einstein could not speak until he was four and he could not read until he was seven. Teachers thought he was slow and that’s why he was expelled from school. Later the world identified the most genius person in him. Thomas Alva Edison’s teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything”. So he was also expelled from school and his mother took him off the school and taught him herself. Later he became one of the greatest inventors of all time having more than a thousand patents. He invented the bulb. During his attempts to invent it, he failed more than ten thousand times. From these, we can understand how much patience and courage they possessed which ultimately led them to success.

I would like to bring your attention to a small creature which I used to observe mostly in my childhood. It was a spider and it was so interesting for me to observe the weaving of its web. During its attempts to make the web, it fails many times. But it never gives up till it accomplishes. It tries many times patiently to achieve the goal. At that time it was not very thoughtful for me. But later on, I read a story of the king of Scotland named Robert the Bruce. In the story, it states that he fought against England six times and he was defeated in each war. The king escaped to a cave in the forest. There once he noticed a spider weaving its web. Six times the spider failed to throw its thread to the next end of the cave but it did not lose hope. It tried again and in the next attempt, it succeeded.

The king got inspired by the act of spider and as a seventh attempt, he collected and trained his soldiers to fight against England. He waited patiently and all arrangements were done and he became confident. The patient preparation and courageous step to the battle led him to golden success.

Byju P. Joseph

The Fabindia School