It would be quite a challenge to try to find someone who is strong who hasn’t been through an incredibly difficult life.
It would be quite a challenge to try to find someone who is wise or courageous or gentle or forthcoming…who hasn’t been through an incredibly difficult life.
When I meet someone, or read a book, or listen to someone speak who is strong or wise or gentle…or maybe all three, I can’t help but see them differently from others. I literally stand in awe of their wisdom, their perspective, their courage, their patience and calmness, their perseverance. Although I’ll wonder…I don’t actually need to know how they got to this point. I just know that their path couldn’t have been an easy one. And with that acknowledgement comes a deep, inherent, and well deserved reverence and respect that I don’t hold for many.
You can buy power, but you cannot buy strength. Strength only ever comes through honing ourselves under pressure. Like a blade-smith folding steel, the steel can be purchased in its raw state, but it won’t ever be strong, it won’t hold an edge after violent use…without repeated firing and folding and pounding.
Yes, a cheap steel sword can look as breathtaking as a masterfully made Japanese katana, but what happens when you need to use it? What happens when you need to apply it? Appearing to be strong is not the same as earning, owning, mastering and applying strength.
The same idea applies to gaining wisdom! Learning from a book, a movie, or a lecture is a great place to start. But it’s kinda like watching a video on how to snow ski, then calling yourself a a skier. Until have you mastered the graceful application of skis…or in this case, wisdom…your new skill can be more dangerous than it is helpful.
And lastly, societally, we seem to have forgotten the simple but precious art of gentleness. Gentleness is often misinterpreted. It’s often seen as weakness. Now, although I don’t often see eye-to-eye with author/professor/speaker Jordan Peterson, this quote by him resonates deeply within me.
“A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control. Dangerous is the alternative to being weak, and weak is not good. If you’re not a formidable force, then there’s no morality to your self control. Capacity of danger AND capacity for control is what brings about the virtue. If you’re harmless you are weak, and if you’re weak you are not going to be good. You can’t be, because it takes strength to be good.”
We need to acknowledge that there is a significant difference between the gentle and weak. Weakness is not a choice. Being gentle…is.
To me, these characters traits; these virtues…they’re not gifts: Strength, wisdom, self-control, compassion, gentleness. They are virtues, they are earned, mastered, and applied. And when I see evidence of those virtues in others…I’m beyond inspired. I’m changed.
Harvesting Insights 