#160 | On patience
Luxor, Egypt
Today, I am writing from El Sokaria Coffee Shop on the fringe of Luxor, Egypt. I flew here from Istanbul a couple of days ago, and four of us (Nick, Ana and Patrick) will head east towards Saudi Arabia tomorrow morning. It's hot — perhaps 35 degrees at midday — and we'll catch a thirteen-hour ferry later this week across the Red Sea. From there, I'll be making my way to Oman — perhaps via Bahrain. As always, let me know who I must meet on my way! Reaching Istanbul last week was the first major milestone of the journey. The city bridges continents; on the shores of the Bosporus, two cultures and thirty million people live together. It's taken a little bit of patience to get to Istanbul, and the notion of 'patience' has kept me occupied as I sipped cay and rested in Kadikoy.
We are used to instant results (deliveries, dates, gratification and entertainment) and forget that the big achievements — the complex problems humans have solved — take decades or centuries. Consequently, life takes patience. Patience, however, is rare.
The rarity of patience and our itching urgency to dig up quick wins creates the following problematic dynamic: First, our expectations are out of whack with outcomes, and we remain chronically dissatisfied. For example, there is an expectation that politicians can fill societal gaps (fixing the NHS, re-balancing the books) within one term. They can't: the problem is too big. Questions that are hard to answer are distilled to binary "yes or no" and "in or out". We expect poverty to be eradicated with just one intervention, a cash handout perhaps, but it will take profound structural changes. We hope that climate change will be tackled in a summer with a green energy breakthrough, yet it'll likely take a thousand small changes over decades. We, therefore, don't do the small things, waiting instead for the black swan breakthroughs that (we forget) don't accidentally arrive.
Second, it means the problems that take decades to solve are underinvested and overlooked. The smartest in a society that expects instant results go to the fast water — where innovation is comparatively easy. The fastest water rushes shallow over the surface. The biggest problems (water and food insecurity, health inequality) get relatively little attention compared to crypto or B2B SaaS while being a much more horrific human failure.
Reading and travel, however, help us develop our aptitude for patience. Reading history helps us understand that significant human achievements take a long time. It puts progress in perspective. Equally, travel reminds us that human achievements are unequally distributed. Even when free-at-the-point-of-care health access is 'solved' in Sweden and is demonstrably achievable, it's unavailable in Sudan and feels a long way off.
Patient people commit to long-term changes. Patience need not, however, create inactivity. Instead, it's about perseverance in the absence of fast results. Patience is not paralysis.
One evening this week, I walked through Kadikoy with Stella, a German bike tourist and now friend, who cycled from Sweden to Istanbul on her seventh date. That alone is worthy of publishing. She and her touring partner have excellent energy. Istanbul wakes up at night: dice rattle on the backgammon boards, Turkish cay is served by the gallon in countless petite tulip glasses, luminescent lighting pours from shops and ignites the crowded street scene, each store full of piles of nuts or baklava or sweets. Istanbul has terrific vibrations, especially Kadikoy and Moda — the city combines a European cafe culture with Middle Eastern warmth and energy.
I talk, as I sometimes do, about startups. A startup requires patience and is definitively speculative. Stella asks a simple question, a great question. Where do you start? What do you do to begin?
Our generation must start asking this question about our most significant issues that will take decades to fix. My answer is just 'start': begin even if you're clueless. Start, and then take the next step after you've started. And, of course, be patient.
It is relevant that we had both just cycled to Istanbul. A fair distance and the analogy was apt. How do we cover great distances? Again: start. Alan Watts quotes The Shobogenzo, a Zen book, in his excellent The Way of Zen:
'If there were a bird who first wanted to examine the size of the sky, or a fish who first wanted to examine the extent of the water and then try to fly or swim, they will never find their own ways in the sky or water.'
This is not a philosophy about prediction or planning, Watts explains, but a philosophy of "not making where one is going so much more important than where one is so that there will be no point in going." His lesson is to appreciate the journey and get going; just get moving. By enjoying the journey, we can be patient with the results. It's pretty easy to get paralysed by anticipation of the road. For me, the 35° warmth in the truck-filled roads makes the Middle East feel — well — challenging. I should be in Oman before Christmas, but Christmas still seems far far away!