Simple Stoic Advice
The need for adversity
The need for adversity
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Seneca in his Dialogues and Essays collection:
Quote
“Excellence withers without an adversary: the time for us to see how great it is, how much its force, is when it displays its power should not be afraid to face hardships and difficulties, or complain of fate; whatever happens, good men should take it in good part, and to a good end; it is not what you endure that matters, but how you endure it”
Advice
The majority of us avoid adversity. We do not like confrontation. We do not like hard things. The majority of us prefer the easy route. And that’s fine, easy is reliable. Easy is a guarantee, to some degree, that things will stay the same. This used to be fine.
But not anymore.
There is a flip side to comfort: when your world changes, will you be ready?
This is an important thought, and one that needs to be contemplated. It is why, in fact, adversity — daily adversity at that — is so important.
Excellence today does not guarantee excellence tomorrow. Excellence is not a solid line that one eventually gets to, it is field goal posts that are constantly being moved.
Think about the advancements the world has seen over the last one hundred years? We went from having no cars and airplanes to having them nearly drive and fly themselves.
The world is in a constant state of change, and it is brought about by adversity and competition.
Adversity pushes us to work harder, smarter, and faster. It helps us to build a thick skin over ourselves through trial and error. And we need this. In the world we live in today, it is changing too quickly to not be changing with it.
As Seneca says:
“Fire tests gold and adversity tests the brave.”
We must be willing to face adversity every day. It is scary. It is daunting. And some days, adversity wins out, some days we’re knocked to the mat and don’t want to get back up.
But we have to.
Because we will learn from that knockdown, we will remember those loses, we will analyze those wins.
This is how adversity betters us. This is how we become brave.
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