Patience: Taking Time in an Age of Acceleration

by Akiko Busch

For all of us trying to find quiet and harmony in an increasingly fast-paced and disordered age, this new addition to the Arts of Living series offers inspired lessons from the natural world on mastering the art of patience.
In Patience, author Akiko Busch gathers personal anecdotes, descriptions of natural phenomena, and quotations from enlightened thinkers to explore the meaning of patience and its relationship to time. Readers will discover insights on every page, as the conversation shifts from the “time margin” one uses to accommodate life's unexpected delays to the “Slow Art” that allows us to experience an image as an event, from growing meadows to Buddhist mindfulness.

Genres: Essays

120 pages, Hardcover

First published October 5, 2010

About the author

Akiko Busch has written about design and culture since 1979. She is the author of Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live and The Uncommon Life of Common Objects: Essays on Design an the Everyday. Her most recent book of essays, Nine Ways to Cross a River, a collection of essays about swimming across American Rivers, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury/USA. She was a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine for 20 years. Her essays have appeared in numerous exhibition catalogues, and she has written articles for Architectural Record, Elle, Home, House & Garden, Metropolitan Home, London Financial Times, The New York Times, Traditional Home, Travel & Leisure and Wallpaper*, among other publications. In Fall, 2005 she served as a Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair for the Visual Arts at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She has lectured widely on architecture and design and has appeared on public radio in the U.S. and Canada. Currently, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday regional section.

Reviews

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely, quiet little tome weaving the theme of patience amongst the natural settings of the author's life thru the seasons. The words nestled between the pages encourage the reader to embrace the philosophy of the book's subtitle, "...taking time in an age of acceleration". A thoughtful companion to the "slow living" movement

[Dan Gobble · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated the nature tie-ins to the discussion on patience. Akiko Busch weaves thoughts into her thoughts and premises about patience from the natural world and names each of the four chapters after the back-drop of landscape used for each of the chapters:
Chapter 1: Clove Meadow
Chapter 2: Jericho Bay
Chapter 3: Beacon Mountain
Chapter 4: The East Woods

My major takeaway from the book: Patience, by its nature, involves time. We can "value" time by creating categories such as "productive time" and "down time" and "wasted time", etc., such that time spent waiting in traffic is often valued negatively. If we can live more fully in present moment, regardless of where we find ourselves in that moment, then we can more fully see value in time spent waiting. Waiting with grace, anticipation, humility, and wonder in everyday life situations like waiting for the bus or waiting for a response to an email, helps us prepare for times of waiting which involve worry or dread.

[Mimi]

Four lovely reflections on the meaning of patience.