Love is patient ...

"If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now." ~ Marcus Aurelius

Be still. Don't react. Act accordingly.

It's time to get introspective and maybe you'll pick something up for yourself along this journey. These three words - love is patient - are the key to defining love. People look at patience and see it as the ability to wait on something when maybe that's not what you want to do.

I'm not sure that's not what 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 was trying to convey at all.

Be Still.

When you steer yourself through the rest of the definition in The Bible, it's telling you in a complicated manner to be still. Through good times and bad, sickness and in health (Think of marriage vows). Don't count wrongs. Don't be irritated. Don't be jealous. Don't insist on your way. It's trying to teach us how to keep our cool not matter what comes our way accepting the positive and the negative with each succint breath as though they were the same thing.

Too many times I'm at fault for reacting in a negative manner or even just wondering why people do ill things and trying to do things to correct their behavior. It's really wasted time and space. Yeah, I wish I could go back and do a hundred things differently. But at this point, it's time to stop charting my gaines and losses, and start counting my blessings.

I've gotten away from this line of thinking in recent months, and allowed my anger and frustration to get the best of me at times, and where has it gotten me? More frustrated and enraged. But I think it's time to get back to what I know is good within me, even if I know how tough it is. I know it's right.

I recite different pieces of this classic poem - If by Kipling - at times to renew the resolve of my beliefs. I think it aligns itself perfectly with the "patience is love" theory.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son.