Strength is a Unit of Measurement
Someone recently asked me how I define weakness and strength. A great question considering I talk about it all the time, I mean, most of my work is about strength. Odd that no one has ever asked me this question until now. I’m glad they asked though because I never would have been able to condense my thoughts on what strength is to me into such concise terms if I wasn’t forced to give them a complete answer in 60 seconds or less.
Strength and weakness are not exactly concrete concepts, everyone has their own ideas on what constitutes each. The more I thought about it, the more it became apparent that the words “strength” and “weakness” are simply descriptions of the quality of the skill set needed to thrive in life despite all the tribulation and trials. Think of a “strong” person—did someone who manages to smile no matter what happens to them come to mind?
Strength is the ability to accept events as they happen and enact effective change both in yourself and in your environment. Those two things (and all the skills needed to do them in a way that is healthy, safe, and productive) are necessary requirements for being able to cope with life and live in the present. People are considered strong when they are able to move on from life’s horrors and weak when they end up mired in any hopelessness that trauma causes. There is so much fragility in not being able to deal with what is currently happening due to being preoccupied with the past. If you’ve never experienced it then count yourself lucky. I don’t know what is worse: being the one stuck in the past or being the one forced to watch someone run from their past like a dog chasing their tail because they’re unable to live in the present. It is a truly wretched existence for either party, speaking from experience.
Now, I have nothing against weakness. Strength cannot exist without it, both as its inverse and as a catalyst for creating and improving it. We are all weak until something comes along that gives us the chance to learn and develop the skills that create strength. Because to me, strength is the ability to keep living properly. By which I mean thriving in the present, which is really only possible if you are confronting things and finding real solutions to them and their after-effects. In the case of my life, I have gone from using unhealthy solutions to stave off dealing with my life to being able to cope properly and therefore move on with my life. I’ve even come to enjoy it daily when once, as a child, I told my parents I just wasn’t meant to be happy. When you put off dealing with life’s events that is weakness and it leads to death. Not literal death (although we can’t rule that out) but something so much worse in my opinion: a living death. Weakness, or the lack of well-developed skills needed to get through the little Hells that come with life, turns people into living ghosts. You died the day you couldn’t deal and every day afterwards you have haunted the body you were born into.
We only have these concepts of “strong” and “weak” because life has aspects that are cruel and necessary. There are parts of life that we all must experience and it is how we face these necessary aspects that tells us how we measure up. If you cannot accept what is necessary for life, you cannot live effectively or experience life fully.
Lately I’ve been spending more and more time confronting the loneliness that comes with being strong. Gege Akutami presented this idea in his serialized work Jujutsu Kaisen and I haven’t been able to accept “strong” as a compliment ever since. It is the first time I have ever seen the blatant expression of the downside of having the ability to deal with your life and all its problems. It comforted me but also hurt more than I could explain even now. Once you are strong, that’s it—there is no going back to being weak. You cease being able to understand others or relate to them, and watching them live stuck in cycles they can’t or won’t attempt to escape is painful.
It is in dealing with others that strength shows its drawbacks. You no longer need to get a bunch of people to validate your suffering or your ways of dealing with it. You can’t stand to see them suffering in ways that seem so pointless and easy to fix from where you’re standing. There is a great chance for extreme resentment, hatred, and even self-isolation as the cost for the gift of strength. You have to create distance between you and those who you know you will leave behind if life demands it. That doesn’t mean the love isn’t real though, it just means that we the strong have chosen life at any cost. It may sound ridiculous but I have ended friendships and relationships because of someone’s inability to trust and believe in themselves. It is inconvenient at best and heinously masochistic at worst and I will admit that I am too weak to watch someone I love suffer at their own hand while refusing help. Or maybe I’m strong enough to say “I refuse” when people ask me to spectate their self-flagellant spectacle. I don’t think I will ever know which one I am and that is okay—I prefer to think of myself as too weak to stomach the agony of my loved ones. It is hard to watch someone leave you behind because you can’t grow, but it is also hard to know you will never get to live together in the present with someone because they can’t shake their past.
There are entire communities born out of weakness. Support groups, seminars, self-help retreats… All giving respite to those with weakness in extremity. Meanwhile, those with strength in excess frequently end up alone and in charge of such a group. I can only tell you what I’ve experienced and due to having to cultivate strength against my will at a young age, I never got a chance to spend any significant time in a state of weakness. So of course I think the frigid, barren side of strength is much worse. Personally, I can’t see anything more painful than loving someone and believing in them only to be met with their refusal to live.
Maybe you think differently, the question is: are you strong enough to do anything about it?
