Patience

World standstill. Our planet Earth grants itself a sabbatical. If people all over the world would not move for two weeks, according to the renowned virologist Alexander S. Kekulé, the corona virus would not be able to spread any further and the pandemic would be over in no time. This is because the virus needs both a suitable host cell, in this case humans, to thrive and multiply, and contact between humans, presumably to spread by droplet infection. However, human mobility can only be limited. As early as the 17th century, Blaise Pascal stated: "The whole misfortune of human beings stems solely to the fact that they are not able to stay quietly in a room.”

 

So we continue to live a life on sight. When we asked our almost 100-year-old mother how she would classify the current corona crisis in view of her long lifespan, she replied that the younger generation in particular is facing a new situation, as they suddenly can no longer plan their lives as usual. And those who cannot plan have to improvise. However, many people have to master this challenge at the moment, such as synchronizing home office and home schooling. This process will unleash an enormous amount of creativity. But improvisation and creativity are also needed when certain goods and services are no longer available. This becomes most dramatic when the medical service is running out of time and, in the case of a large number of patients, has to classify the infected persons to be treated according to the severity of their illness in a triage. The question of how to distribute the scarce human and material resources among the patients will present the respective decision-makers with ethically difficult tasks. With this prioritization of medical assistance, it will probably not be possible to avoid traumatic experiences entirely.

 

But this crisis reveals yet another shortcoming in our society. We must be patient. This virtue seems to have been lost to us humans in our fast-moving times. We ask questions impatiently and expect immediate answers, as we have been used to: What is the most effective strategy for fighting the virus? When can the protective measures taken be lifted again? What are the economic and financial consequences of the current shutdown? When will we finally have overcome the pandemic? Epidemiological, economic, legal and ethical questions to which no one can give a reliable and accurate answer. And the more questions remain unanswered and the longer the crisis lasts, the more impatient - almost infantile - we become. Stefan Zweig, however, stated: "Impatience is fear." If Zweig is right, then our impatience only increases our fear of the threat. On the other hand, we would gain more hope and confidence if we would follow the apostle Paul's invitation to Timothy: "God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of strength, love and prudence.”

 

An unknown person from a letter by Rainer Maria Rilke composed a poem "On Patience". Here, Rilke and this unknown person conjure up in a wonderfully cautious way an art of living that is based on the question and not on the answer, on the mystery and not on certainty, on serenity and not on the strenuous hunt for the right life and the quick, immediate solution for all cases. However, one must practice "loving the questions themselves". They would possess something enigmatic, mysterious. They are "like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign language" - possibly hardly accessible and at first cryptic, but nevertheless central in the process of one's own search for a successful life. At the end it says: "It is about living everything. If you live the questions, you may gradually, without realizing it, live into the answer one day, far away.“

 

If, in today's world, in which we have no answers to many questions, we concentrate first on the important questions and live these questions with patience and a sense of proportion, and gradually live into the answers, then we need courage and trust, or more precisely: the triumvirate of trust:

 

• trust in oneself,

• trust in one and the others and not least

• trust in God.