Tolerance and Patience
Today I was talking to a friend and she told me she was “trying to be more tolerant.” I responded with, “don’t you mean ‘patient?” She thought about it for a moment and asked, ”what’s the difference?” “There’s a huge difference,” I replied, surprised she didn’t know what that was. Do you know what it is?
The difference between patience and tolerance is the presence or absence of judgment.
To be tolerant is to say that you have already made a judgment but you are attempting to ‘not apply it too harshly’…whereas to be patient is to provide some time and space for change before you make the judgment that brings you to a point of intolerance.
Tolerance is the measure of how much stress something can take before it snaps…Patience comes from the Latin word ‘pax’ which means ‘peace’. To be patient is to look for the peaceful way…not to judge and cause upheaval. Continue reading ‘Tolerance and Patience’ »
