Life Without Adversity Means Nothing

Life without adversity means nothing, because without adversity there would be no purpose to life. It has taken me a long time to learn that. Our view of life tends to be shortsighted; we want what we think is right for us today and give little thought to the consequences.  I feel that I was given a great gift by going through all that pain. It taught me a lot about life and how to live it. One cannot expect it to be easy and never painful. Yet all of us do at one time or another.

Countless times it has been explained to me that the reason we get depressed is because we want to be. We should always try to look for the good in everything. There is always good in something and everything; most of us, however, are too scared to look for it.

I believe that everything that happens does so for a certain reason. We may not always be able to see it and, therefore, we find ourselves depressed. Although we cannot always find the good that does not mean it is not there. We must believe that there is good and therefore be happy.  I am making it a goal to search out the good in what problems I experience. Often the reason is right under our nose, but we cannot see it because we are depressed.

For a long time I was not able to see any good in my being unpopular. I was depressed as cause and by result. I would always say, “Who does my being unpopular benefit? Not so-and-so, certainly not her, and definitely not him. No one is better off because of my suffering.” What I could not see was that I was the one benefiting from my life as an outcast. I learned so much because of it, not least that I should not hurt people they way I was being hurt. I feel that today I am a far better person for the adversity I experienced. We all must realize that we are the beneficiaries of our own suffering and not anyone else.

The above is from a journal entry I wrote on January 4, 1986, during my junior year in high school.  I wrote it during a particularly difficult period of time.  I had just asked a girl I really liked to the junior prom and was sweating out her answer; at the same time, I was experiencing a whirlwind of emotions over another girl, whom I had taken to the prom the year before.  I was torn between the one girl and hope for the future and the other girl and the past which I could not seem to forget.

Yet while within that storm of emotion, I stumbled upon a few of the great truths of life: that without adversity, life has no meaning, and that we are the beneficiaries of that adversity.  Looking back I am more than a little surprised that I had come to such a realization while still in high school; from the vantage point of a few decades, it appears sometimes that many people struggle to learn these lessons even in adulthood.  I don't say that to brag, because at the time (high school) I probably thought these were truths that most others had already learned and that I was the one who was late to the party.

Of course, as humans, we have a tendency to forget lessons we have already learned.  Over the next few years, as I finished high school and served a mission, I had to be reminded of these lessons more than once.  Because I was human, I still had weaknesses that I struggled with, and those struggles often led to discouragement that robbed me of the peace I should have had with the knowledge that adversity had made me a better person.

As I have written before, the girl I had asked to the prom that year first said yes, but then changed her mind.  I also tried to be friends with the other girl, only to find that to be challenging enough (see: Waiting Until After Your Mission).  I made a lot of new friends my junior in high school, and at first I was happy to bask in the light of these new acquaintances, but sooner or later I felt the need for more.  I always wanted to be with my friends but often when I was around them, because of my quiet personality, I had little to say.

The theme of our senior year was "no man is an island," yet, ironically, I sometimes felt separated from my friends by the coral reef that was my quiet personality.  One day I was feeling down and called a friend to talk, only to find that I did not have the words to describe how I was feeling, and my friend ended up doing all the talking.  On another day, when I was again feeling down, this friend asked me how I was; I wanted so desperately to tell this friend how lonely I was, but I said instead that I was doing fine.

That high school theme, "no man is an island," is nonetheless true.  We are social animals that need to associate with other people; we need the positive regard of others.  While everything might happen for a reason, sometimes that reason is that others are weak and make mistakes.  I know I was weak then, and that I made mistakes; I know that I am still weak, and that I still make mistakes, all these years later.  Because I was weak, I sometimes expected too much from my friends, yet, at other times, I doubted that I had a right to have any expectations at all.

Occasionally, a few decades after the fact, I get indications that I really didn't know what others were going through in high school.  I am reminded of the old television series Hogan's Heroes and the character Sergeant Schultz.  We are all like Sgt. Shultz, we know nothing . . . nothing! Everybody is dealing with something. Everybody is weak. Everybody makes mistakes. Generally speaking, nobody is better or worse than anyone else. We are all children of God, and as such, we all have value.

There are many self help books out there that tell us we need to be strong and confident, and as a result we may get the idea that admitting weakness is a bad thing.  We may also find it difficult to allow that others might be weak.

Yet, as the Lord told Moroni, God gives us weaknesses that we may be humble, and that if we humble ourselves and exercise faith, then His grace is sufficient to turn our weaknesses into strengths (see Ether 12:27).  It may seem counter intuitive in today's competitive world, but great things can happen when we acknowledge our weaknesses to God (see: "Because In My Weakness, God Made Me Strong." & His Grace is Sufficient).