TL;DR
Embracing adversity as an opportunity for growth, rather than avoiding it, we should embrace it becasue it leads to personal development and fulfillment. While it is natural to seek the path of least resistance, adversity should be seen as a chance to cultivate character.
If you asked me what an oracle will respond to the question: “What is the key to a successful and happy life?”, I will bet my money on character. I am doing myself a huge favour by picking character because as I imagine you have already wondered, it is such a broad term that the bet is unfair. I use the word character to represent a tree with five equal branches; virtue (itself with four branches: wisdom, courage, justice, temperance), rationality, resilience, consistency, and humility.
Given the broadness of my concept of character, I will assume that you agree with me to some degree that it is essential for a successful and happy life, and will not take the pain to make the case for character. I will, however, proceed immediately to address the question of how we build character.
But how do we build character? What is the single well whose water will nourish us with the one thing that we have agreed to be the most important ingredient for success and fulfilment?
We build character through the chance of facing adversity, and the manner in which we respond to it; if we are both fortunate to be unfortunate and wise enough to leverage our misfortune for growth, we will build character.
Come along with me on a journey through time and place, from AD 50 Rome, through AD 62 Jerusalem, and 1946 Vienna.
First Stop: Rome.
In the year AD 50, a young boy was born into the court of Nero. He’s was not a royal birth. Far from it, he was born a slave in the house of Epaprhoditus, Nero’s secretary. Because he had no name, he will later on be called Epictetus, from the greek word for “acquired”.
In Discourses, Book 1 Chapter 24, Epictetus writes on challenges: “Difficulties are things that show a person what they are. Therefore, when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. ‘For what purpose?’ you say. Why, so that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat. To my mind, no man has a more advantageous difficulty on his hands than you have, if you will but use it as an athlete uses his opponent.”
Epictetus’ Rome was a bustling center for gladiators and olympians, and in a typical athletic point of view, an olympian’s worth could not be separated from the worth of the opponents they faced; the greater the opponent over who one triumphed, the greater the accomplishment.
Epictetus is pointing out three important things; firstly that our character is developed by the difficulties (opponents) against whom we wrestle, secondly that we must condition our minds to see adversity as an opportunity to earn the Olympic champion’s laurel in sweat, and that we must think ourselves fortunate to be in this situation.
Does it surprise you that Epictetus the slave, through strive and adversity, gained renown as a giant of western philosophy, earned his freedom, and died an inspiration to the emperor Marcus Aurelius? He became in the same courts where he had been a slave, a revered master.
Second Stop: Jerusalem.
Enter Jerusalem, the center of Christianity and the town every crusader dreamed of. The year is approximately AD 62, and James the Just, brother of Jesus, has taken upon himself to write to the Christians dispersed outside Israel.
He writes in his letter: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing…Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”
Given how similar James’ thinking is to Epictetus, I have joked that they may have as well been distant relatives. The themes on adversity that we find in James are parallels to those found in Epictetus; firstly that we must rejoice in it, secondly that we must consider it to be the refiner’s fire for our character (I like James’ emphasis that adversity could lead us to wanting nothing), and thirdly that there is immeasurable reward for those who submit themselves to adversity as character development.
Last stop: Vienna.
Our last stop is in Vienna, Austria.
Over a nine-day period, a middle aged medic, Viktor Emil Frankl, who recently survived the terror of the holocaust has committed to writing an autobiographical work that unbeknown to him will become the era’s handbook for dealing with adversity. Unlike his predecessor friends in Rome and Jerusalem, he is more concerned with the actionable response to adversity.
He writes: “The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life”.
Frankl agrees that our cross is our opportunity, and then urges us to bear the cross in a manner that gives meaning to our lives. He argues that we must develop a sense of “tragic optimism”, and must maintain hope through the process of continuous action and compassion for one another.
But … ?
A friend recently argued that there was no point in having it hard if one could have it easy. Why pray for adversity? While glorify hardship when an easy life is possible?
It is my opinion that as humans we gravitate towards the path of least resistance and so it is only very natural that if one is not predicting doom’s day, they do not opt for the hard way that builds character. We cannot fault ourselves for that, and I think it will take a lot to make a case for the hard life.
What this article sought to establish, however, was that when it does come to us (as a result of forces outside our control), adversity is an advantage, it is a favour; the emphasis is on thinking of adversity as an opportunity to build character that we will not have had otherwise, as being smiled upon by fortune.
Should we then pray for misfortune, or go out of our way to cause it? I don’t think so. There is so much damage that can be done if we go down that path. What we must do is be swift to see misfortune, when it does happen, as an opportunity, and to leverage it to build the character that is worthy of a high calling.
A mentor of mine once told me that she was very grateful for the many years of hardwork and struggle it took her to reach the top of her organisation. According to her, she felt rather comfortable making tough decisions that made other people uncomfortable because her experiences had built the required muscle. It made me think very differently about my own career and my own life; perhaps I am being fortunate each time I am unfortunate, and this is only the required process.
I will conclude by paraphrasing one of my favourite poems, C.P. Cavafy’s Ithaka: As we set out for Ithaka, may our road be long, adventurous, and full of discovery, may we keep our thoughts high, and be stirred by a rare excitement, and if we reach Ithaka to find her poor, may we not think ourselves to have been fooled; wise as we will have become, so full of experience, we’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.