If you were to mention the word "strong" to me as a kid, I surely would have raised my arms up and curled my biceps, making the connection that "strong" meant "muscles." Physical strength was what I knew back then. I remember being fascinated with my father's musculature when I was a boy, his dark, chiseled arms the result of hard labor on a dairy farm throughout his youth. His muscles were so much bigger than mine, and I would egg him on to flex from time to time, just to see his biceps bulge. I wanted to be like him one day.
As I grew up, most of my peers thought of me as strong. I was a good athlete, I was very fit, and physical activities came easily to me. I was always at the top of my PE classes. I began lifting weights in high school, and still continue to today. I have dedicated my life to being considered strong, and have worked hard to maintain it.
But what does it really mean to be strong? Life is teaching me that it's a lot more than physical strength. There is mental strength, emotional strength, and character strength to name a few, and I would argue that each one of them is more important than physical strength.
For purposes of day-to-day life, we need a certain amount of physical strength to get through our daily activities, especially if we have a job that requires manual labor. But in order to get through our days, we need the mental strength to get out of bed and go to work, the emotional strength to be positive about what we face every day, and the character strength not to cut corners when things seem too hard the way they are.
I'm not knocking physical achievements. They require a good amount of mental and emotional strength to be able to maintain. I have incredible respect for anyone who has pushed themselves physically to get the results they wanted, whether that was to cut up for a bodybuilding contest or to shed 100 pounds. It is no small accomplishment.
But the achievements that have come to impress me more are the ones less tangible, at least on the surface. I am humbled by a couple I know who work the graveyard shift 7 days a week, with no vacations, cleaning a couple of restaurants in order to support the 7 children they have at home. They go home after their shift to get their youngest children off to school, then sleep for a couple of hours, get up and run errands, pick up the kids from school, make dinner, maybe sleep for a couple more hours, and come back to work. And they don't complain. They don't lament their lot in life. They just get up and they do it. There is no second-guessing.
I try to think about them when I complain about some trivial irritation with co-workers, or when I sit around pitying myself for not having achieved all of my goals yet. I try to appreciate the fact that I have a home to sleep in when I pass people living on the street. The more negativity I feel come up inside me about where I am in contrast with where I'd like to be, the more I realize where my weaknesses lie. Physical strength will only get you so far in life. Being able to triumph over the mental and emotional challenges we face in this world is what truly equips us to succeed in anything we choose.
I've learned that mental, emotional, and character strength need to same investment as physical strength. Just like we have to get up and workout every day to make noticeable changes in our physique and health, we have to push ourselves mentally and emotionally every day to make improvements in our inner state of being. We have to overcome fear continuously to break out of our comfort zones and achieve the things we really want. To quote John Patrick Shanley, "All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap."
What does it mean to be strong? I believe, more than anything, it's courage: courage to call someone you're afraid to call in order to build a relationship with them; courage to confront someone who's treating you with disrespect; courage to ask for what you want; courage to start living your life and not letting others live it for you. Whether you want to become stronger physically, mentally, or emotionally, you have to have the courage to do things you're currently afraid of doing to get the results you want. And courage is a muscle. The harder we push it, the stronger it becomes. We may not always want to, but the more we do, the more we'll see changes. No complaining. No second-guessing. Just doing.
Stay strong.
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