What Makes Us Stronger

This week, I grappled with the challenge of crafting a piece of writing that was uplifting and stimulating, a task that proved more difficult than I expected. Nobody wants to read about another's hard times when we're in the middle of difficulty because of events beyond our control, but my attitude was to tackle issues head on and believe the difficulty will not defeat us.

After exploring ideas and writing about 400 words, I realized what I'd written was not head on. It was piffle. Yes, piffle. It means nonsense, balderdash, or gibberish. Usually, I get inspiration from my walks around the Airpark, but for the last month, I've been nursing a broken rib from a face-plant fall, and walking, or more specifically, breathing, wasn't comfortable. Another source of inspiration in the past has been my dreams, but I didn't remember any of my dreams. Last night I set an intention to wake up with an idea. This morning I woke up with a question, "What makes us stronger?"

You might think that stronger means striking back at the offending thing that threatens to make us feel weaker. My gut is telling me to talk about us as individuals first. I've spent 25 years examining myself inside to explore who I was and why I existed. This process took me longer because I hid from myself for years, so there were layers upon layers of baggage and garbage, false beliefs, stories, and patterns inside me that needed sorting out.

Finding the why meant looking at my uncomfortable behaviors like perfectionism, righteous indignation, people pleasing, gullability, arrogance, flakiness, and more. After turning myself inside out and examining those behaviors, I began noticing that all of them had an opposite side. Perfectionism and righteous indignation became understanding and empathy. People pleasing and gullability morphed into assertiveness and discernment. Arrogance and flakiness faded as I acknowledged my faults and discovered who I was inside. Looking as honestly as I could at my faults made me a stronger person. The process had side effects, too, like a blossoming of courage, self-love, vulnerability, compassion, and resilience.

All that work had unexpected results. Failure revealed my faults so I could resist judging myself and others. It meant seeing failure more as a friend, not my nemesis. Looking through that failure-as-friend lens meant I was getting somewhere and sometimes had to re-evaluate the road map. It meant I had a trajectory but had to reset the co-ordinates. Sometimes it meant I had to retrace my steps to find an authentic way forward. Failure required me to learn how to forgive myself. All along, failure and its consequences in pain, struggle, and angst had been teaching me how to be strong.

What about the royal "us"? We're such a collection of differences, aren't we? With countless differences of opinion shaping every aspect of our existence, what is our source of strength? We know threats to our collective safety and well-being bring us together for protection. Elbows up, Canada, eh! We fought in world wars as we banded together to fight against a common enemy that threatened freedoms we valued. Perhaps we need a deep collective dive into what our values are as nations.

Safety is no longer valued when a majority of people believe their right to safety trumps another nation's rights. Leaders are not standing up for the values we thought we had. The world postures for supremacy to be the best, wealthiest, and biggest bullies. I thought civilization was beyond the sandbox phase in growth.

A collective failure to right the ship may mean we birth a new, upright ship with the hope our failures will not be fatal so we can sail again. Visioning is hard. I can see billions of individuals becoming the best versions of themselves. Unforeseen events are inevitable if those with the power to change remain stagnant.

Everywhere, I hear people wondering what they can do to help. We choose what we buy carefully, listen to politicians and cast our vote, we discuss our choices with friends and family. Most of us really care about what happens next. We can also start or continue to become the best version of ourselves. It would take substantive work during a time of uncertainty, but we would not be alone. Billions doing introspective work will make a difference.

In the dynamic fields of self-help, self-care, and self-transformation, influential leaders are dedicating their efforts to providing assistance and support to individuals striving for personal growth and well-being. We can read, listen to podcasts, write books, and help our neighbours. If we undertake the steps to become courageous, self-loving, vulnerable, compassionate, and resilient humans together, I believe we will have an answer to how to move forward with dignity.