Strength

As a youngster trying to discover myself, my instincts often headed in the direction of strength. 'I’d rather be a hammer than a nail'. Strength is cool. You get to do what you want, people respect you, a lot of positives and no negatives. So I began to act strong. Breaking rules is a sign of strength. So is rowdy behavior. Conforming to rules cannot be strong because someone else gets to dictate what I do. And this was not an original conclusion of mine, but a widespread belief that preceded and has outlived my adolescence. Notice that God is equated to kings, and His chosen ones have the ability to break nature's laws? They call it performing miracles, sounds more cool that way.

So strength lay in acting macho. But in my life I had received nothing but kindness from my parents, my teachers, and other adults around me. 'What is strength?' I asked myself. When two people arm-wrestle, and one wins, the winner is clearly stronger. If these two people were to meet in a dark alley, and one were to rob and kill the other, would the robber be stronger? Something seemed wrong. Bullies, robbers, rapists, child molesters, murderers, and particularly dictators who succeeded in oppressing millions of people would all have to be considerably stronger than their victims in the traditional sense.

There is something in us that revolts at the idea of admitting that wrong-doers are actually strong - nope, we should not give them a single point for what they did. Something as positive as strength cannot be associated with crime. Gandhi said 'The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong'. He also said 'A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident'. Wait a minute, we seem to be redefining strength here. There is no reason for the arm-wrestling winner to be just, or for the just to be forgiving. These are different character traits that may or may not be found in the same person. What Gandhi really meant is that justice, non-violence and forgiveness are good, and therefore he associated them with strength, which is also perceived as good.

I concluded that strength, as in the ability to succeed, is completely neutral on the scale from bad to good. Like a hammer, it totally depends on what you do with it.