From failure to glory: how to transform adversity into inner strength.
By Omaira Vivas
HoyLunes – Life is an enigma; no one can predict the glorious future or the life full of failures of each new being that comes into the world. Some people sometimes estimate the blessings and fortunes that the family in which the individual is conceived has enjoyed, thinking that every member will share the same fate. However, it does not always happen that way, since the truest nature of people promises learning, growth, and development that goes beyond the physical or the inherited.
This has to do with that inner power with which one is born, capable of awakening in the face of negativity to transform the worst that may happen to us into a meaningful experience to grow, to improve, and not, on the contrary, to decline with the idea of loss, failure, or the end of any possibility of recovery. While it is true that the majority envelop themselves in a black cloud where failure wins a battle with no option to continue the fight, there are those who fill themselves with strength and optimism to continue in the war with the purpose of overcoming.
From the very beginning of existence, we are thrown into a sea of events, believing in a confused destiny where one dreams of fortune and possessions that utopically represent happiness, glory, and pleasures. That is why most human beings immerse themselves in this sea of useless struggles against the tide of an ego that sometimes pulls them away from the path of good and corrupts them, without allowing the necessary calm, which never arrives and which, in short, permits those who long for it that reunion with themselves.
It is in those battles and shipwrecks of each of us where the true meaning of existence is given. Reasoning and understanding failure from a perspective different from the one commonly given allows the emancipation of thought from martyrizing stereotypes in order to achieve great discoveries about ourselves and the world around us.
Very few find within themselves that compass that guides such reasoning, for the changing winds of circumstances do not allow them to see the immutable star of reason, which shines in confusion without being discovered as a gift given to each person deserving of glory.
Those who have discovered throughout time that failure is not the final stage, but the raw material with which authentic strength is forged, understood that goals are achievable by thinking clearly. Hence, life is also an immense journey in search of that discovery that makes possible the awareness to stop being victims, failures, losers, and to transform ourselves and become the warrior who lives in calm in the midst of the storm, seeking his peace and his glory.
From this perspective, it is to be assumed that the increase of those who believe themselves to be losers or failures tilts the scale disproportionately, to the point that this part of the population decides to do nothing to stay afloat, believing that it is not worth it, that their efforts will be useless. If one were to take a panoramic view of this phenomenon, we would see them all with arms fallen as symbols of negligence toward action and, what is more serious, toward reasoning.
This article does not arise from mere chance; it seeks to respond to a causal reality of constant controversy and agitation for the human being, where uncertainty and anxiety have become the currency of exchange.
The harsh globalized crises seem to have increased the belief of losers in entire populations, and the most serious thing is that each one believes that the worst part has fallen upon him alone. That is why it is worthwhile to delve into Stoic philosophy, which has always been a prototype of survival for times such as the present, where everyone loses faith easily and finds it difficult to locate their inner compass—metaphorically speaking—and to regain that lost course.
Far from the image of the great difficulties of man and of societies, there must be a reconstructive vision of that chaos of thoughts, in a cosmos that embraces us with the desire that we do something for ourselves and, consequently, for all humanity.
We are, in totality, a dynamic and practical system to achieve a serene life with purpose. Therefore, understanding what is pointed out here also means managing, through words, the discourse that must predominate in that glory deserved by each person. And that, “It is not things that disturb us, but our opinions about things” (Epictetus). The true freedom of man throughout history does not lie in the absence of problems, but in the ability to respond to them with virtue and reason.
#hoylunes, #omaira_vivas,
