I was having an interesting conversation with my mom the other day which lead to the following questions:
Why is it natural to not fully appreciate a good thing until it's gone?
Are trials and challenges really for our personal benefit?
Or is it like when we tell ourselves that, the girl who we kinda have a crush on who has been making up lame excuses for why she can't hang out with us, must be a lesbian? Or maybe it's like when we tell ourselves that the jerk who didn't wave in the rearview mirror when you clearly went out of your way to slow down so they could move into your lane, probably learned to drive in Utah and doesn't know any better. You know, whatever it takes to make life a little more bearable.
I took to the internet to answer this question and found reasonable arguments for and against the notion that challenges build character. From my prospective, challenges themselves don't build character, rather they provide opportunity to grow. In an effort to explain this concept more clearly, I broke down the word "character" into several traits that I believe define a strong character. With each trait, I thought of people who I admire and I speculate on how they developed their character trait.
Grateful - Most of us were born into families with at least one loving parent who tried to raise us the best they knew how. From the time we take our first breath everything is provided for us since we are not yet capable of providing for ourself. It's only natural that we only see what we don't have because we come into the world being handed what we need for survival.
True appreciation comes with obtaining something that is difficult to obtain. The harder we have to work or the more we want something, the more satisfied we feel when we get that thing or the more we regret not showing our gratitude once a good thing is taken away from us. Hopefully, we don't end up spending our lives chasing false satisfaction. Those who have the ability to be grateful for what they have now and work hard for that which they desire for the future have more often then not experienced times when they have lost a good thing that they took for granted and times when they had to put forth a lot of hard work to achieve a goal.
Loving/Charitable - From my experience, this seems to be a trait that comes more naturally to women than to men. For whatever reason, I think we have a difficult time selflessly caring about others, especially those we do not personally know. It seems to me that those who are most charitable are people who genuinely love themselves. It could be that as we overcome the challenge of learning to love ourselves (AKA embracing that which makes us unique and forgiving ourselves of our weaknesses), we are then better equipped to project our acquired internal love outwards.
Understanding/Tolerant - Tolerance of others comes with education. As we grow older and experience life we come into contact with people who are different, weird, or quirky. Our own life experiences to this point have lead us to draw conclusions and provide at least a little logic to the decisions we have made. Therefore, if others have not drawn the same conclusions, they must not be rational or logical and something must be wrong with them because something is not wrong with us, right? But then the universe does a funny thing and places us in a situation that would be in our best interest to somehow not allow differences to become the focus.
Maybe you are working on a common goal together or maybe your ability to perform your job relies on your ability to cooperate with a werido. Whatever the reason, you pretend to like them for the sake of the greater goal. As time goes by and you reach your goal or accomplish whatever it was that forced you to be around the spaz, you come to find out that as you no longer have to spend so much time around them, you don't have to fake like them anymore... because you kinda actually appreciate or respect some aspect of their personality. You realize that, while you still view them as the heavy set boy at the local pool swimming with a t-shirt on, maybe they have a good reason for drawling the conclusions that they have drawn? Or if not that then at least that their positive attributes outweigh the negative.
Patience - Patience takes practice. It's true. Patience comes with age because we encounter enough challenges that rarely get worked out overnight, but yet, the world continues to orbit the sun and life moves on.
Virtuous - Virtue or high moral standards begin with the ability to control what we think. This is yet another trait that takes a lot of practice. Some of those who I have encountered who are best at this are those who have come to a fork in the road, one road leading toward personal control, the other leading toward self-destruction. When they chose the road of personal control, they became good at virtuous thoughts out of necessity; this is not easy and takes a lot of persistence and dedication but with time and practice can be achievable.
Knowledgable/Wise - Knowledge and wisdom come with life experience. When we encounter a situation, we take at least a little away from it and store it away for another time where that experience will help us handle a new experience in a more effective or healthier way. Nobody is born knowledgeable or wise, knowledge and wisdom are a gift of being alive.
I believe that challenges can be a blessing or a curse dependent upon prospective. In the end, personal growth only matters if you want it to matter. We all are going to face our fair share of challenges and obstacles, I don't believe that challenges are given to us based on what we can handle, but I do believe that whether we think we can handle them or not, they are going to keep coming. We have little control over most of the challenges we will encounter but we have a lot of control about how we are going to view them.
Is the challenge, trial, obstacle, hardship, misfortune, etc. a blessing, a curse, or an opportunity? I'm not one to pretent that I have all the answers. I have opinions but my opinions change all the time. If you have an opinion about the purpose or lack thereof regarding challenges and character, please express it with a comment.
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