If we look around, people whom we don't like and people who harm us are in the minority. Let's say we're at work, at a social gathering, or at a Dharma center with thirty people. How many of them do we really dislike? We may have problems with a few people here and there, but we manage to stay in a room together, don't we? It's not like we despise them and they hate us. The number of people we can't stand in this world is actually very small. These people are rare. To practice patience we need the people that we don't like. We can't practice patience with our friends or with people who are kind to us. Finding people we don't like or who threaten us is not so easy. So, when we finally find them, they are a precious treasure! They are rare to find. When we meet them, we can think, "Fantastic, I get to practice patience now."
— Thubten Chodron, Cultivating a Compassionate Heart