“Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it all is possible; without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo, your purse is magically filled with twenty four hours of the manufactured tissue of the universe of your life. It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions.”

Time can only be recognised by the observation of Change – something which was, is no longer the same. Since there was a Before and there is a Now, there has been and is Duration, which we speak of as the Passage of Time.

Time does nothing, accomplishes nothing, only passes. It has the character of something given, not made, beyond control. It is a source of interest, because we are affected by it; it is a source of one of our limitations. It takes time to learn about people and things. It takes time to learn how to do your asanas. It takes time to move from one place to another. It takes time to communicate. It takes time for plans to work out, wounds to heal and love to deepen.

In the face of  the indisputable requirements of time, it makes sense to adopt an attitude towards one’s  existence that is consistent with the limitations which come to us because we live in a time conditioned world. This attitude we call Patience. It does take time to know, to do, to mature and all the rest, it follows that to take this into account and be willing to submit to it ( in other words to be patient) is human.

Patience is not laziness or lack of effort or procrastination or weakness. Rather, it is an all abiding attitude of one who understands that one’s existence is conditioned by a force beyond our control. To wish that it were not so would be a vain attempt to live in a world of one’s on rather than in the real world which the authentically human being accepts with Patience.

Excerpt  from International Yoga Teachers’ Association Magazine: July – September 2009 Edition. Yoga and the Human Condition by Matthew O’ Malveney