The Compass of Adversity

Morning Thoughts #232

God puts obstacles in your path so that you may not walk down a false one. What is false may be walked down easily when the way is clear—but if the slightest resistance causes you to turn back, is it a fault in your character? Or is it simply an indication that your true fate did not lie down that path at all? If the latter is the case, what a blessing that someone disrupted your sleepwalk! You might have made it all the way to the end of a false goal, sound asleep, had some holy (even if slight) resistance not arisen.

Let us reframe: Oh, possibilities that now, in retrospect, seem abandoned—those paths we turned away from—why did we turn? Yes, we can learn to be more resilient, to push through, but sometimes our lack of resiliency is a sign of something else. Sometimes, it is a quiet force redirecting us, guiding us—a compass within deflation. What challenges could we not withstand? Perhaps it’s not that we couldn’t withstand them, but that our energy was saved for worthier battles later.

In retrospect, this can be a blessing—if, through it, we come to find a path we are utterly determined to see through, no matter what adversity, delays, or sidetracks arise. This is reframing, but it must not be mistaken for an excuse for idleness or fragility in the face of life. No, it is counsel: first, to build strength and belief within yourself in latent form, and then to engage. Take this path, take that path—and know that the weeds, the thorns, the delays, the mud, and the ice will be encountered on any road worth taking. But where does it feel most natural to summon the strength of resilience? Where is your courage activated as if by preset command—the meaning fueling the drive? Which is to say: bless adversity on the way to our becoming!

How many false paths we might walk down if all were paved and climate-controlled! We need the delays, the momentary frustrations, the lack of immediate gratification, to better angle us toward self-knowledge, to help us gauge the wheat from the chaff. There were dreams I had ten, fifteen years ago—some I have not achieved at all, some not fully. At times, I have come across steep, loose rocks and turned toward another path. As I sit here, still conversant with an inborn strength, I sometimes look back with the wisdom of years and feel a sense of disappointment that my younger self did not follow through at this or that treacherous fork in the road.

But our theory of mind is incomplete even when engaging with our past selves. Better to reframe—not to make excuses, but to reframe. That pursuit was incomplete in one regard, yet a blessing in another. Veering from the path I once thought was meant for me only revealed that it was meant for me up to a point, up to a phase in life. (And this is not to say that all paths are fragmented in such a way!) But let us trust ourselves—our courage, our spirit—that turning away was not a mere failure, but an act inspired by something deeper. In the long run, it turned us toward a path that suits us even better. Not a path without hardship, but one whose hardships seem the most natural thing in the world to work to overcome.

First, know yourself as someone with the strength and will to reach your goal. Formulate this strength. Train yourself. It is not necessary to articulate the exact coordinates of your path just yet. What is necessary is knowing you have the strength to do what is needed for what is most intrinsically meaningful. And from that place, you can better come to terms with your shortcomings, with the unrealized possibilities—coming to know them as canaries along the path to dead-end coal mines.

That your strength began to wither down the road of a particular pursuit may be less an indictment of you than of the pursuit itself. But I want to be careful with this messaging, because it can so easily be turned into an excuse for those whose inner character is defined by a lack of resilience. No, no, no! This reframing is only a worthy consideration for those who have done the work—the self-work, as they say nowadays—who have built up strength and energy within them, who know of its abundance, and who have begun searching for its proper outlet.