Monday, September 15, 2014

The Struggle

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That's a difficult phrase. It contains a plethora of new questions and ideas to delight my little mind. Considering that we don't really have a way to measure the repercussions of anything but the physical in the sense of death, it opens a world of possibilities and imagination. I believe that is why it is so unknown among the nations of the world. The less that the world knows about a subject, the more it's likely that it will bolster the mystique and creative cloud concerning it. Death is only seen physically. We can talk of it in the spiritual sense, but there really is no way to see that. What would be a mental death? What would an emotional death consist of? With such a lack of observations and data, how then can we say that being near to death somehow makes you stronger? Are hard things truly necessary to become strong? Is there a requirement for suffering and pain?

And what of resistance? In the world of physical fitness, resistance against your muscles of some kind is seen as the way to ultimately strengthen your muscles. It's not an instant gain. It's a process, a journey, a path to struggle down. It is very very difficult for the average person to understand their own body's signals. We talk and try to measure things like how long to exercise, how hard to push it, what type of exercises we will be doing. It's all predictive anyway, but the more proficient you become at understanding your body, what fuel and material it needs and the ever present thought of what resistances to place upon your muscles, the more efficient you can be at strengthening your muscles or improving your fitness over time. However, in contrast, the most common error of anyone seeking to do such is overdoing it. 

Guiding your thoughts now into a mental or spiritual or emotional sense, does mental stress or spiritual challenges or emotional abuses somehow ultimately make us stronger in each of those respective categories? As I cannot agree that a person that has had more suffering or pain or difficulty than another is somehow stronger than the next, I cannot agree with the beginning statement here: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Leading to the spiritual thought of the day: 

1 Corinthians 10:13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

If we believe in a loving Heavenly Father, He will not allow us to overdo it. We will not be permitted to feel or suffer pain or resistance too great for us to bear.