My father always used to say: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” ’til the accident. – Jimmy Carr
I’m reading The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. The subtitle is Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. It mostly deals with the way your mind works, different belief systems, and yeah, ancient wisdom. One chapter is called The Adversity Hypothesis. It looks at the idea behind the famous Nietzsche quote “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It’s true to a certain extent but, as Haidt notes, you can get PTSD from traumatic experiences and while that doesn’t make you weak, it doesn’t make you strong. It’s debilitating. And long term exposure to stresses make one more susceptible to anxiety disorders, depression, and heart disease.
The part that struck me, though, was the part about posttraumatic growth. While not guaranteed from a traumatic experience, it does happen. It’s basically the phenomenon of discovering what’s really important in life. Haidt hypothesizes that there is a weak and a strong version of The Adversity Hypothesis. In the weak version, adversity can lead to growth. In the strong version growth is only achieved through adversity and that, “the highest levels of growth and development are only open to those who have faced and overcome great adversity.”
He also shows research about people who were able to make sense of their tragedies. If you can make sense of it and move forward, you are truly growing.
This brings me to me. (Of course. It’s my blog. I’m not just doing a book report.)
If I had to summarize all of the worries that I have in my life, it would basically amount to “Am I doing this right?” The other ones are “Am I being a good person?” and “Am I getting by too easily?” So, the adversity hypothesis struck a chord with me.
I haven’t had a lot of adversity in my life. I grew up in a safe neighborhood in a safe state in a safe country (as Americans, and Westerners, we take that for granted). I’ve been healthy for my entire life. I received an education. I’ve had ups and downs but they’ve been on the same scale as a lot of fortunate people. I mean, I’ve had my heart broken and I’ve lost jobs and been scared about my future but nothing I’d consider out of the bounds of the normal vicissitudes of a good life.
On the grand scale, I’ve had two real challenges. I have to deal with a genetic predisposition to anxiety and my parents passed away within six months of each other leaving me an orphan at thirty-two. I take steps to live with the former and I’ve lived through the latter.
But what did I learn? Did I grow? Did I learn a thing from my parents’ death? I learned how to sell a house. I learned about living wills and lawyers and burial plots and the inheritance tax. I came to admit certain truths about my parents and how I grew up that I probably wouldn’t have been able to admit were they still alive.
It didn’t wake me up to my network of friends and family. I knew I had them before. It definitely confirmed that they were there, though. People showed up for me in a big way during that time.
Haidt further theorizes that the best time to experience tragedy would be in your formative years, from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five, your late twenties being when your life gets, to a certain extent, crystallized. I experienced my parents’ death at thirty-two, outside of that window. It’s an arbitrary distinction but it does make me wonder. Did I make any significant changes because of it? Did I re-orient my life around different priorities?
I quit a job once, feeling like “life is too short.” I half heartedly pursued acting work and then I ran out of money. Now I’m kind of back to where I started.
I suppose this is just another luxury problem. I’m sitting in my Brooklyn apartment on a Sunday afternoon wondering if I could have been a better person if my life had been harder. But it’s still a valid question. If adversity is a great teacher, it seems that it would be a waste not to learn its lessons.
