Rumi strips away the passive connotation that usually clings to patience—that weary notion of gritting your teeth through time—and reframes it as an active vision, almost a kind of prophetic seeing. The real muscle here isn't endurance but imagination: the ability to perceive potential within present difficulty, which requires both hope and clarity rather than mere resignation. A person waiting in a hospital corridor while a loved one undergoes surgery either counts ceiling tiles in anxiety or, as Rumi suggests, mentally rehearses the conversation they'll have when that person emerges healed—and that internal readiness changes everything about how they bear the moment.