On Patience

     I often confuse the Seven of Pentacles to be the suit AFTER the Eight of Pentacles. The image of the guy waiting for his coins to be "harvested" here seems apt as the next scene after the slog. Studying its interpretations have just recently trained my mind to think patience— a beginner's patience to be exact. To me, this is a man who has not yet developed his own pace, strengths, and flow but is nonetheless close to his goals and rewards. 

Patience has always been attributed to Earth signs most especially my Sun sign, Virgo. For a long time, however, I was yet to learn how to make it a virtue. Because frankly, I have used patience as a poor substitute for boundaries, honesty and responsibility in many situations. Ha! (I might write more about it one day.) 

What kind of patience is "virtuous" anyways?  I like how the great poet and mystic Rumi recognized that all great undertakings begin with a nothingness, what is not there— a tiny problem. A place to fill. Even boredom or a petty annoyance can be a chance. He also touched on how much man is held back by his attachments to certain results.

Indeed we can argue that the greatest visionaries held on to their visions not because of some sort of deadline or certainty of outcome. 

Perhaps then, true patience in its core, is an active surrender. To see things through with trust in every moment, that if we immerse in what is in front of us it naturally leads to where it must.  

This also seems to coincide with the Seven of Pentacles imagery.

"I’ve said before that every craftsman

searches for what’s not there

to practice his craft.

A builder looks for the rotten hole

where the roof caved in. A water carrier

picks the empty pot. A carpenter

stops at the house with no door.

Workers rush toward some hint

of emptiness, which they then

start to fill. Their hope, though,

is for emptiness, so don’t think

you must avoid it. It contains

what you need!

Dear soul, if you were not friends

with the vast nothing inside,

why would you always be casting your net

into it, and waiting so patiently?

This invisible ocean has given you such abundance,

but still you call it “death,”

that which provides you sustenance and work.

God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,

so that you see the scorpion pit

as an object of desire,

and all the beautiful expanse around it

as dangerous and swarming with snakes.

This is how strange your fear of death

and emptiness is, and how perverse

the attachment to what you want. "

~from ‘Craftsmanship and Emptiness’  by Rumi