What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – or at least that’s
what Nietzsche said. Of
course he went mad in the end, which makes you rethink the wisdom of these
words. I must confess that I think that sometimes I believe this phrase a
little too much. There is no doubt to my mind that times of difficulty produce opportunities
to grow in character. In fact, I can testify that the times of greatest
personal growth in my life have come from the times I found the hardest. But
that alone doesn’t make the statement true. Difficult times are by their nature
unpleasant, and as such no-one seeks them out. I can appreciate what was achieved
through my past struggles, and even be glad that these struggles happened in
the past, without wanting any more. And so when I see difficult times coming, I
have a tendency to avoid them as much as I can, to interact with the trouble as
little as I can, so as to prevent being hurt by it.
Of course you can’t run away from your troubles, but you can
to a certain extent let them pass you by. This is no guarantee that you will
avoid the pain of the situation, in fact, it often just delays or even prolongs
it. But there is even more to this. I seem to think that however I get through
this, either by facing up to it, or by burying my head in the sand, the reward
is still the same – as in Nietzsche’s promise – all you have to do is not let
it kill you. But this isn’t the truth of the matter. Like so much of life,
ultimately what you get out is what you put in – even if this isn’t always immediately
obvious. This is because this difficulty induced character is produced as a
result of learning how to deal with these difficulties, learning how to grow to
embrace and overcome them. If I just let them go by and ignore them, then I can
learn nothing from them.
 |
| An adorable picture to illustrate the point... |
I think I have written about this tendency of
mine to hide from my troubles before, and it’s a tendency I suspect I will have
to fight until the day I die. It’s hard because sometimes I don’t feel strong
enough to face up to the struggles of this life. That’s because I’m not. But
God is. And He never leaves me on my own to face these struggles. I just need
to remember to keep my eyes on Him and not my problems. The ironic thing is
that I can’t beat the struggles of life by fighting against them. I can only
overcome them by letting them come.
Letting them wash over me. And I can only do that if I trust God
completely. And I will only make it out on the other side if I follow Him as He
leads me all the way through
No comments:
Post a Comment