April 20, 2020 

“If we want to live wider and deeper lives, not just faster ones, we have to practice patience – patience with ourselves, with other people, and with the big and small circumstances of life itself.” (M. J. Ryan)

With the Covid-19 situation, it becomes increasingly clear that things will not return back to ‘normal’ quickly. It seems that individually and as a collective we are just at the beginning of a long journey, and it will take us a lot of patience. Having patience means we can let things have time to fall into place, we are okay with waiting, and remain calm and tolerant.

As a child, we are told from an early age that patience is a virtue. However, the way most of us were living life until this pandemic brought the world to a standstill, very few of us were ever really shown or taught HOW to be patient. Patience is not something we have; it is something we consciously learn and do. The good news is that the more we practice it, the more patient we become.

Due to the delays caused by the pandemic, I also had to learn to be patient before I could finally hold, for the first time in my hands, my new book ‘Hawaiianische Wiedergeburt’ (the German version of my book ‘Hawaiian Rebirth’). It was not until 33 days after the book’s publication by Giger Verlag that it made its long way to Hawaii, and I am so grateful I can percieve now how beautiful the book looks and feels.

I realized this is a great time to practice patience, surrender and let things naturally unfold. If you look back on your life, how many times did you act on something prematurely and realized later you just could have waited to have that thing come into your life more effortlessly? Or you realized that what you attracted into your life was not what you really wanted?

In the Hawaiian language, every letter of the word ALOHA has a particular meaning. The last A stands for AHONUI. Much more than merely being patient, Ahonui literally means “a great breath.” If we can just pause and take a “deep breath,” we start to realize that we now have the time to take a step back and reflect upon what’s happening around and most of all inside of us.

A Hawaiian wisdom keeper I met 9 years ago during a vision quest on the island of Moloka’i shared with me that practicing Ahonui builds character. If we look at the cycles of nature, it reflects our own ability to practice endurance, tolerance and acceptance in situations that we find challenging. How about you? In which areas of your life you wish you would have more patience?