At first, I was dismayed as I was clearly vilified. Patience, Patience, Patience, I told myself, as a glimpse at another unpleasant personal email brought a feeling of distress. My hands hovered over the keyboard, ready to ferociously overreact to “prove the senders were morally wrong and set it right.” But another part of the slightly paranoid, prickly me realised I had no real control over their perspectives, intentions, or conduct. “Let them,” I could hear my mother-in-law, my sisters, coach Julia, and our ‘friend’ Mell all whisper.
A wise saying attributed to Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) offers perfect guidance for such flashpoints and potential conflicts: “The strong man is not the one who can wrestle, but the strong man is the is the one who controls himself when angry.”
These words of wisdom point to a type of patience, called Sabr in Arabic, that is measured, often quiet, and a skill to be practised deliberately.
Ramadhan offers a great opportunity for this: After all, fasting during the holy month is not only about abstaining from food and water between sunrise and sunset.
“We should fast with the heart from dark thoughts often caused by anger, anxiety, and expectations, with the ears and eyes from false information, and with our attention from the endless scroll,” someone once told me, probably my in-laws in Oman.
Like my sisters in the Netherlands, they also strongly advised not to let certain personalities take up too much space in our minds. Do not let them live there rent-free.
I once watched my mother-in-law patiently deal with someone who, on solid evidence, had taken something valuable while working for her. I saw her walk away without a word when a loved one was falsely accused of something. And I remember her saying, “Only God knows,” when I pointed out the unlikely coincidence of the (then) nanny supposedly ‘finding’ a golden, gifted Masha’Allah baby brooch of high emotional value, far from where we had lost it and weeks after we had searched everywhere.
“You cannot alter people’s morality or the world by ‘screaming’ at them. Sometimes you need to quietly observe and choose your battles based on selective intervention: There are battles that are worth it and support you and there are the ones that will just drain and exhaust you. Learn the difference.”
I like to think I have always had a certain patience, especially when immersing myself in another culture or navigating work. It is the kind of Sabr that trusts good things come to those who wait, resists being pushy, and thinks like a chess player, taking careful baby steps. I have also been patient with people seeking a service while they often confide more in me than strictly necessary. “Unarming,” a boss in Brussels once called that trait.
But I am also notoriously impatient with certain people in my personal life when I doubt their integrity or intentions, and I tend to react like a pit bull, clinging to this moral fury feeling. It is rarely their act itself that enrages me, but the false pretense: acting as if they are doing me a favour while charging a hefty fee, or presenting themselves as a victim crying expensive crocodile tears, or taking the moral high ground after doing something morally wrong.
Yes, we ought to practise fasting from certain frustration and feelings on a daily basis, but that is honestly easier said than done in a modern world where many of us are bound to be inconvenienced by the impulses, wrong intentions, misinterpretations, and impatience of others.
I feel moral fury naturally, but I have learned it does not always require an immediate or fierce response. Many Omanis, in particular, taught me that patience is partly about accepting what we cannot control. It does not mean failing to stand up for what is right; it is about staying relatively calm and cool in the face of disappointment, distress, or frustration.
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