Patience is a virtue. Waiting is meditation.

We all know the mythological story of Shabari and Lord Rama. Shabari was the devoted disciple of Maharshi Matang. She worshipped him like a God and took care of all his daily needs. Maharshi Matang was pleased with her devotion and duty. Through her devotion, she became the most trustworthy disciple. While Maharshi was leaving for the heavenly abode, he blessed her, “You are the luckiest one. In your lifetime, Lord Shree Rama will come to your hut to meet you.”

She was delighted to hear this. Every day she used to clean her hut, collect flowers and fruits from the nearby jungle, decorate the path with these flowers, and keep the fruits ready for the meal. And continue waiting for her Lord. But He did not come. The next day, she kept on repeating the same thing. He did not turn up. She did not lose her heart. She had immense faith in Maharshi Matang. She knew that the blessings of Maharshi will come true one day.

She kept on waiting, waiting, and waiting. Days vanished into years. Years passed by into decades. Still, every day, she used to collect flowers and fruits for her beloved Rama. He did not arrive. She did not stop waiting. He was testing her patience. She did not lose any. Finally, the Lord has to bow in front of her devotion. He arrived at her hut. She was in her tears. The eternal wait fructified into God’s arms. So was the devotion. That was the faith. That was the waiting.

Patience is a virtue. Waiting is meditation.

If one desires to seek something extraordinary, one must learn to wait. Nature teaches us the same thing. Everything in nature has a predefined timeline. Nothing happens before the time. The Alfonso tree takes five to six years to bear fruit. The coconut palm takes three to six years before it starts flowering. You must have heard a story about a Chinese bamboo tree. For the first four years, it is invisible inside the ground. And in the next five weeks, it grows speedily to the height of almost a hundred feet.

However, today, most of us live in metro cities having many challenges. The traffic, the crowds, the noise, and the distances have overpowered our minds. We experience this nastiness every day. Life has become fast-paced. If you have stopped on a signal, and when a red light turns green, and if you take even a few seconds more to move forward, the drivers behind you start honking madly. Sometimes, people are unwilling to wait even for that red light to go green. They move ahead rashly, breaking all the rules. The urgency to move ahead quickly has become second nature.

We have reached a stage, where a few seconds of delay in loading the web page makes us agitated. We become restless. All such behavioral traits have dramatically reduced our ability to wait and be patient. Slowly, the tendency to become restless has increased. We want everything instantly. We have almost forgotten that there is something called waiting.

Like many other things in life, the market too tests our patience. We expect instant gratification from the markets. We want to become rich quickly. Hence, we are not willing to wait for the compounding to work in our favor. We have almost assumed that a market is a money-making machine that will deliver wealth every day. But the market is not a gambling den. It is not a casino. Wealth creation is a long enduring process. It takes time. It tests patience. It demands waiting.

To sight an example, for more than one year now, the market is range bound. The market has not moved at all. This is agitating the nervous investors. They are getting jittery. New investors who have started investment through SIP at this time are staring at a notional loss. They keep tracking their portfolio every day and get a feeling that nothing is happening. They are concerned.

One needs to understand that this is the true nature of the market. There will be times when the market will not move for years together. This is what is called “time correction.” This is the consolidation phase. This is the most painful period for investors. However, past statistics show that after such consolidation, the market will eventually move up and oblige all of us with huge gains.

But the only thing that the market expects from us is to “learn to wait.”