From the Department of Coltish Antithesis:
On "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger"#
Posted 2024-02-12
I recall the nice ring of this aphorism when I first heard it. I embraced it...for awhile.
However, on closer inspection:
what doesn't entirely finish me off still moves me closer to the finish line.
I'm on a non-negotiable entropy journey called mortality. For that journey, the research findings keep accumulating to show
that anything classed as trauma -- physical, emotional, etc. -- propels me several extra steps forward. So the time when, ball-cap visor pulled stupidly low, I crashed my forehead into my deck project's hefty rim joist: that was a journey-advancing trauma (we'll give it an acronym, JAT). And there have been quite a spectrum of other JATs through the years, too many of them self inflicted -- "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to".
I do have a minor concession to propose: it may be that each trauma bears the seed to slightly enhance emotional resilience for facing the next. If true, then we have a replacement aphorism: what doesn't kill me entirely...kills me a little less than it previously would have. I can live with that (coltishness intended).