A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor

As a psychologist, I am often focused on ideals. Ideal parenting, ideal conditions for childhood development, ideal relationships… Through psychology, we have learned much about what works best and what works less than best in all fields of human experience.

The danger here is to judge all that is less than ideal as wrong, bad, should not have happened. Our human perspective skews towards a negative take on anything that involves pain and suffering. We reject all that falls short of this benchmark of ‘ideal’, believing it is wrong to have occurred in the first place. Life is meant to be easy!

We are seeing lots of weakness in our culture now, the result of a few generations of generally ‘good’, comfortable, affluent and easy times. Many people cannot handle hearing words, opinions, even humour, that they do not agree with, or when someone misgenders them. Many feel they have a right to judge, censor and even violently oppose anyone expressing sentiments that ‘hurt’ their feelings. As they shut down the ‘fascist’, they miss the irony that they have become cancel-culture fascists themselves.

Earth school is hard; it is inevitable that we “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” in so many ways. But is it necessarily a bad thing?

The famous British paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott spoke of ‘good-enough’ parents; that it would be a problem if parents were perfect, because the child would then have no struggles at all and develop no resilience for life. He taught the principle of developing through difficulties, that adequate parents do not insulate their child from challenge, but rather be supportive, empathic witnesses through their experiences.

Our innate desire for truth-beauty-goodness comes from our spiritual core, and translates into a desire for these things in our lives. But how can we consciously know and appreciate these qualities without also knowing the contrast? Nothing gets our attention more effectively than pain. Perhaps life is prodding us forward by pushing us out of our comfort zones.

How could we evolve without stormy seas to endure, wild conditions to hone our skills? We don’t learn much in an easy life. Bit like a bye week in the sports calendar of life.

Good times make weak people. Weak people make bad times. Bad times make strong people. Strong people make good times.

Let us embrace the bad times with courage and fortitude, knowing the sword of our character is being tempered in the flames. Let us find hope in knowing the storms are there for us to grow.