Patience Is Ours

Brief notes on a fictional model

We saw the letter was signed Lampros and adorned with his crest and his motto: PATIENCE IS MINE.

Epictetus encouraged his students to “persist and resist.” The slogan is also translated as “bear and forbear.” In other words, philosophers ought to master their desires so that they can persevere through pain and pleasure.

You can think of this as patience. The sage-like character in Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs, Father Lampros, is an excellent model for it.

If we bring to mind the four cardinal virtues (self-control, justice, courage, and practical wisdom), patience is closest to self-control and courage. Patience is grounded in the confidence that whatever you fear – whatever tempts you – will pass.

This confidence is yours. The last two words of the motto is a fitting addition to anyone’s personal maxim. Virtue is his. It is internalized, owned.

Father Lampros, living like a dreamer behind the monastery walls, was perhaps the only one of us to live at the heart of reality.

For the Stoics, the knowledge that you can persist and resist through any circumstance is, once gained, permanent. That knowledge can ground patience. It may not be grasped all at once, but built up in time by proving to yourself and others that you are steadfast.

Confidence gives way to tranquility. Presence in the now, with awareness of the past and willingness to meet the future.

Patience can be yours, mine, ours.

Admittedly, Father Lampros would smile and say that there are also sarcophagi for the spirit. For him, the hour of annihilation was the hour of life.