Photo by Tim Trad / Unsplash

Life is so amusing. The goal is to have faster computers, larger homes, more comfortable cars, and so on.

People rarely brag about getting lost and finding their way back home. Healing from an injury or mending a broken heart. The issue here, I believe, is that it implies a fall and demonstrates weakness.

However, in order for growth to occur, there must first be a period of weakness. You must have struggled and fallen as a child before learning to walk. When you overcame that difficulty and learned to walk, your weakness transformed into your strength.

Similarly, I frequently see people pretending to be without flaws or selectively sharing flaws that aren't flaws ("I work too hard" is not a flaw in my opinion). This is dangerous for those who believe them, but it is even more dangerous if the person believes it.

Life should be about progressing to new and greater challenges. Each challenge makes us a beginner all over again, and we approach the challenge with childlike wonder.

I'll go into another post later but I've been reading many books that connect the idea of tramua and healing together. I've realized that most of us have suffered some form of tramua. I previously thought it was just people who had gone through extremem events suffered trauma but I was wrong and it's applicable to everyone.

I think Buddha also recognized this when he said life was suffering. His path of understanding, acceptance and growth obviously helps but I personally think that adversity isn't a bad thing and controlled exposure helps us growth - think of the growth you get from the stress of working out. If the stress can be controlled then it can lead to growth(deadlifting 50 lbs might help you grow but lifting 1,000 lbs might break your back).

I've been thinking of life as a series of controlled stress and healings/growth.