Strength is a Choice

Categories: Blog Oct 15, 2017

A good friend and I recently had a conversation about learning and growing. In truth, the conversation was about dealing with things we don’t necessarily like. In real truth, the conversation was about dealing with people who do things we don’t necessarily like. So really, the conversation was truly about strength training. Don’t panic. This will make sense by the end. You just have to hold on to the squirrel for now.

When we were kids learning to stand, we had to go through a struggle of building strength before we could stand. This was a legitimate struggle. We had to learn how to hold and balance our big heads. We had to learn how to move our arms and legs and push ourselves up from the ground. Every movement that was made contributed to the one before it. Every struggle to move made the next challenge to move more achievable. Eventually, after months of effort and struggle, we learned to stand. We built the strength through struggle.

Similarly, dealing with the issues of life we don’t enjoy, or the things we don’t like, is a struggle. It is in dealing with the issues, dealing with the circumstances, dealing with the people and their choices, that builds our strength for the next challenge or struggle to come. And know, there will be a next challenge to come. Just look around. I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are plenty of issues in the world today creating a large amount of struggle for us to grow stronger from. We’ll all be Hercules when the dust settles…

Anyway, there are always parallels. Just like when we were young, the struggles we had to move made us strong enough to be able to stand and then truly move. Today, the struggles we have to move through life will eventually make us strong enough to be able to stand, or take a stand, and truly live. If we choose to stand…

As children, we chose to stand. No amount of a parent putting you back down on your back or belly ever stopped you from striving to get to your feet. We should let no amount of sadness, fear, anger, or darkness put us down on our backs either. We should constantly choose and strive to stand.

It’s our choice. We were not created to be victims of our circumstances or victims of the people around us. No matter what they do. We can’t control any of them. But we can control us. We can decide to struggle and grow stronger.

Here is what I mean:  Some people will take, rob, steal, slander, defame, sabotage, and hurt you. All of this sucks. It would be easy, to retaliate with vengeance or shrink away into nothingness when these things happen. It would be easy to contribute to the darkness. There isn’t much struggle in that.

The struggle is two-fold in doing the opposite of those things. There is the struggle of dealing with the circumstance that surrounds you, and then there is the struggle of choosing to rise and stand above it. Choosing to give, share, lift up, encourage, help and comfort others when you don’t feel like it. There may be some struggle in that. It’s not always easy to give, share, encourage and comfort others, especially when you see the wrong against them, especially when the wrong is against you, especially when the one you don’t want to help is the one who slandered you or stole from you. There is real struggle in that. But then, there is also a beautiful strength born from that.

The point is. The world has enough things to complain about. It has enough sadness, anger, and darkness. What the world needs is a bunch of strong people who are willing to take a stand, even when they get knocked down or even when they see the wrongs around them. The world needs a lot of those “other people” I mentioned above; people who choose to stand through the struggle and give themselves, people who give away the very beautiful strength they’ve built up through the years of dealing with struggles.

Again, you were made to stand, in every sense of the meaning. And that takes a lot of effort - it is a struggle to stand, to shine, when everything around you looks dark. It takes a great deal of strength to continue to get up when you are continually knocked down. But each time you rise, you shine a little brighter. But it’s all choice. In the end, we choose to rise or fall, to give or take, to shine or not. Strength is truly a choice. Even though you were made to have it.

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