True hardship

No one likes hardship or suffering, yet it is almost inevitable we will experience it.

That may not be an agreeable idea to you because we all have a wired-in fear of hardship and suffering, and rightly so. But maybe, if we sought to change our attitude towards hardship we might begin see it as an opportunity for learning and development. A chance for our roots to grow deeper.

I don’t by any means say that flippantly, like somehow you can click you’re fingers and perceive it differently. Yet by learning to change the language of our internal monologue from negative and pessimistic, to positive and optimistic we can begin to see things differently. (This links back to my post on ‘Being content‘)

Interestingly, however if you look at the biographies of many people, which society would call ‘great’, you will clearly see the thread of suffering and hardship running through their story.

These people would often describe the hardship they endured as being one of the elements that formed, or shaped them as a person.

Nelson Mandela, is a prime example. The hardship and oppression he was born into as a black man in Apartheid South Africa, and his struggle for the freedom of his people, was the furnace that forged him into the inspirational leader he later became.

He came face to face with the ‘evil’ in humanity and could not settle for the injustice he saw around him. In doing so he chose a path of hardship; one that drove him to a deeper way of existing within the storms that beset him. In prison he had space to reflect on this and see the pointlessness of tit-for-tat behaviour.

As such when he was released from prison and became president he was able to lead the people of South Africa forward in reconciliation between prisoners and captors without perpetuating the cycle of hatred and violence that had gone before.

If he hadn’t been forced to search more deeply within himself I don’t think he would have been able to lead the way that he did.

So what are your hardships? Where are you suffering? And how can these uncomfortable moments help you search more deeply within yourself and your world view for a truer way of being?

“We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Romans 5:3-4