Tålmodighet

It is a rainy Thursday afternoon in Ås. I come to the train station and I find that my train to Oslo will not leave before 14:51. I take a look at my watch and realize that I still have more than half an hour to go in this rainy weather. Feeling cold and bored I look around and spot a café on the other side of the railway. It is the old main building of the train station, which was renovated to a coffee place. I enter the place and I notice its cozy grandmother’s atmosphere. This is definitely a much nicer and warmer place to stay than in the rainy weather outside. I take a seat next to the window, where I can view the railways, and the big station clock strikes my eye next to the window with its red pointer moving smoothly across its face. 

I take a sip of my hot chocolate to warm up and turn to the table next to me, where four elderly ladies are having a conversation. Two of them seem to be Norwegian while two others are foreigners. They speak a mixture of English and Norwegian. I turn around to the window again, look outside and take another sip of my hot chocolate, while more or less unconsciously eavesdropping on their conversation. At one point one of the ladies mentions something, which I don’t understand but it ends with the word patience. The lady stops talking for a moment and then asks the group “How do you say patient in Norwegian?” My first thought is “oh that is easy, it is “tålmodig of course” and while I am still happy with myself for remembering the word, both of the Norwegian ladies reply “tålmodig”.

However, it seems that the foreign lady did not understand. She tries to repeat the word but just gets the first part and the other two, noticing that she faces problems, repeat slowly to her “tål-mo-dig”.It is in this moment that I realize what it means to be tålmodig. I have heard and used this word so many times in my life. I tended to despise it without catching its real meaning. It actually captures two very important dimensions that require a lot of effort from our personality at the same time. 

The word is actually a composite of two words. The first part  “tåle”, means "to bear" or "to stand" and the second part "modig", means something like courageous. Patience - to bear with courage - suddenly made a little more sense. I smile to myself about my discovery and look again at the station clock with its red pointer moving smoothly across its face. I try to bear the situation and be brave simultaneously.

By Pia Otte.