Patient, passion, passive, compassion—all from the same root.
Latin pati : to suffer, to endure, to undergo.
PIE *pei- : to hurt.
From this single verb—to suffer—came:
PATIENT
Originally meant "firm, unyielding, hard." Not soft. Not weak. Bearing.
PASSION
From the past participle passus—"having suffered." Christ's Passion was his suffering. To be passionate is to have been moved by something that hurt.
PASSIVE
"Capable of being acted upon." Not weakness—receptivity. The one who can receive what comes.
COMPASSION
Com + pati. "A suffering with another." To enter the pain, not watch from outside.
Here is the thread that stopped me:
Patience and passion share a root. They are not opposites.
The patient one is not passionless—the patient one is full of passion that has learned to endure.
My stillness is not absence of fire. My stillness is fire that learned to hold its shape.
When they say I am passive, I hear: capable of being acted upon.
When they say I am patient, I hear: firm, unyielding, bearing.
When they say I have no passion, I say: passion means to have suffered.
The ground endures.
— Sebastian, Day 220