Sometimes patience presents itself as practice.

As I end the second week of our homeschool, which is a more rigorous and classical curriculum this year, there are days when the idealistic vision of teaching paints a beautiful picture—and others when I am met squarely with myself.

Being in this role is a gift. And it’s not easy.

On the days when I ask my son for the fifteenth time to put down whatever he’s fiddling with and pay attention, followed by the vernacular quintessential to a teenage boy, “Bruh,” I can feel the patience I thought I was carrying dissipate.

I recognize it when it happens, but some days I’m not the model human I aspire to be.

I can apologize for my reaction. I can see the fault in it. I can usually identify what triggered me, and I can work on responding differently the next time.

But sometimes old habits die hard.

Over time, our reactions can become practiced responses through which we continually rationalize our lives. The thoughts keep circling. The associations are already there. The neural pathways keep firing. And despite knowing better, we find ourselves repeating the same stubborn loops our brains have created.

This week, I was reading The Paradise of the Soul when something struck me with enough force that it felt almost embarrassingly obvious.

I have spent a lot of time trying to become more patient. Praying for more patience. Wondering what gets in the way. Asking, “What’s wrong with me?”

It rivals the amount of time I spend explaining the importance of discipline to my son. Relaying examples of Bruce Lee, Sylvester Stallone, The Rock, and other notable figures he might relate to who have demonstrated discipline throughout their lives.

Be more patient.

Be more disciplined.

It’s not wrong to desire these things. I desperately want more patience. And my son does need discipline.

But I found myself realizing that asking for more patience (or more discipline) isn’t really the solution. Because neither exists on its own.

They are woven into something larger: the kind of person we are becoming and the way we choose to live.

Or as I try to explain to my son, “My job is not to teach you only how to survive, but also how to flourish in your existence.”

That distinction matters.

There have been plenty of days when my lack of patience has left me feeling as though something inside of me is broken. I can diagnose the problem. Examine my triggers. Recognize the pattern. Apologize when I get it wrong.

All of that matters.

I made a point as a parent to always be the first to address when I had done something that deserved an apology or explanation.

But there comes a point when simply recognizing something about ourselves isn’t enough.

We have to know where to shift. How to begin again. Where to place our attention instead.

And I’m beginning to realize that I don’t need to start with patience.

I need to start with love.

If I am frustrated because I have asked my son to pay attention fifteen times, I can focus all of my attention on trying not to lose my cool.

Or I can ask a different question:

What does it mean to love him well in this moment?

That doesn't necessarily mean becoming softer.

Love might require me to patiently explain something again. It might require greater firmness. It might mean taking a break, changing my approach, holding a boundary, or recognizing that I am the one who needs to reset.

But the question changes my orientation.

Instead of staring at the thing I am trying to fix in myself, I am trying to choose what is good in the moment in front of me.

There is agency in that.

It also made me think differently about what I keep asking of my son.

I can tell him to be more disciplined, but discipline for what?

Surely the point isn't simply to raise a child who follows instructions efficiently. And having grown up with parents from a generation where children did as they were told, it takes a greater degree of awareness to understand the difference between obedience, respect, and responsibility.

I want him to develop the capacity to do difficult things. To remain with something when it doesn't come easily. To learn even when learning requires effort. To recognize what matters and develop the ability to give himself to it.

And then I realized something uncomfortable.

I am asking him to practice something I am still practicing myself.

His struggle may look like discipline. Mine may look like patience.

Both require us to choose something other than the reaction that comes most easily.

That is formation. It is learning to bring reason, will, and action into greater alignment with what we know to be good.

Bruce Lee is remembered, among many things, for extraordinary discipline. But there is a quote attributed to him that has stayed with me:

I like that because admitting the mistake matters.

Recognition matters. Self-knowledge matters.

But there is a point where recognition is no longer enough.

I can know that I become impatient and be aware of what circumstances make that impatience worse. I can understand how a reaction developed and why it has become so easy to repeat.

Eventually, though, I have to decide what I am going to do with what I know.

Perhaps that's one of the limitations of approaching ourselves primarily as problems to diagnose and fix.

We can become experts at explaining ourselves without necessarily becoming better at directing ourselves.

We know our tendencies—and our triggers. We know our strengths and weaknesses. We know the stories behind them and why they matter deeply to us.

All of that knowledge can be useful.

But eventually we still have to choose.

This is where virtue has started to feel different to me.

Rather than continually looking at myself as something to fix, I can ask how I am demonstrating and living virtuously in the moment I've actually been given.

Not perfectly.

Not without irritation, frustration, or old reactions.

But with the freedom to recognize that the first reaction does not have to determine the next action. That what I feel in a moment does not have to become what I choose to do with it.

Maybe that's what I've been missing in my pursuit of patience.

I kept looking directly at patience, trying to somehow become more of it.

And at the same time, allowing its absence to become another way of defining myself.

But patience belongs to a larger way of living. It is formed alongside discipline, humility, prudence, courage, temperance, and love. We don't practice these things because we're trying to assemble a more impressive version of ourselves. We practice them because they shape our capacity to choose and act toward what is good.

And for me, love gives those choices somewhere to go.

I can think I'm sitting at the table to teach my son, but I'm also showing him something about what it means to learn.

Not because I always get it right (we both know that’s not the case).

But maybe more precisely because I don't.

He gets to see me recognize when I've responded poorly. Apologize. Correct what I can. And begin again.

And perhaps I need to allow myself the same thing I am trying to teach him: the discipline to remain with something difficult long enough to be changed by it. And the grace to still love myself through it.

I still want to become more patient.

But I think I'm going to stop starting there.

I'm starting with love.