When Strength Had to Mean Something Different

By the time I discovered Stoicism, the accident was a couple of years behind me.

I had returned home, gone to university, and was teaching. From the outside, that might have looked like recovery.

But my body had begun to seriously break down.

That period was the most difficult of my life. I had worked hard to rebuild, to move forward, to create a life again. Then suddenly effort did not seem to be enough.

I could push harder, but pushing harder did not necessarily make things better.

That was difficult for me to accept because I had always believed in effort. If something needed doing, I did it. If something was difficult, I worked harder.

But there are times when determination alone is not enough.

That was when Stoicism began to matter to me.

One of the ideas that struck me most strongly was the distinction between what is within our control and what is not.

At first, that can sound almost too simple.

Of course there are things we can control and things we cannot.

But when life is going well, the distinction does not always feel urgent. When your body is falling apart, it becomes very urgent indeed.

I could not simply order my body to recover.

I could not guarantee that a treatment would work.

I could not force life to return to normal.

What I could control was how I responded to what was happening.

That did not mean pretending I was fine.

It did not mean becoming passive.

It meant using my energy where it could still make a difference.

I could seek help.

I could learn.

I could make decisions.

I could change direction.

I could stop wasting energy on the question, “What is happening to me?” and begin asking, “What can I do now?”

That was a different kind of strength from the one I had relied on before.

For much of my life, strength had meant endurance. Keep going. Work harder. Push through.

Stoicism taught me that strength can also mean judgment.

Knowing when to persist.

Knowing when to change course.

Knowing what is within my control.

Knowing when effort is useful and when it is simply exhausting.

I still value perseverance enormously. But I no longer think perseverance is enough.

Sometimes strength is persistence.

Sometimes strength is restraint.

Sometimes strength is asking a better question.

And sometimes strength begins when we stop demanding that life return to what it was and start deciding what we can do with what we have now.