Patience is Part of the Code.

Actor and creator Ethan Hawke has a lovely little book called Rules for A Knight, Knopf Publishing, 2015. It functions as a set of rules to live by, a “Knight’s Creed of Chivalry,” if you like. In idealizing the genre of chivalric codes, Hawke offers wisdom and stories for personal and public leadership as well as notions on the good life. Here is a wonderful bit about how patience needs to be part of one’s code:

There is no such thing as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A hurried mind is an addled mind; it cannot see clearly or hear precisely; it sees what it wants to see, or hears what it is afraid to hear, and misses much. A knight makes time his ally. There is a moment for action, and with. clear mind that moment is obvious.

In the history of Western thought there is an apparent dichotomy: the life of action or the life of contemplation. But life is not best lived in duality—true contemplation yields in the right sort of action; a worthwhile action often follows from clarity born in contemplation.

I am daunted by a person that has achieved such critical success when they say, “there is no once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” But it is actually true: opportunities come and go. And with the patient one, senses clarified by contemplation/observation/mindful attention he/she will be able to act when the best opportunity presents itself.

This is not the hectic and frantic search for amassing goals and accolades (defined by others), but it is the intentional pursuit of value/virtue and that will amass accomplishments of