Strength, Subtlety
A friend of mine is entering a competition of physical strength this weekend. He exhibits this in addition to his strength of spirit, which is why I count him as a friend, naturally. I admire strength: of character, of mind, of will, of conviction, of self-control, strength of kindness, strength of loyalty, and strength of the body, too.
My mom, for example, is a small woman of great strength. She birthed and raised seven free-thinking adults; she has dealt with "unnatural" death, a cousin to suicide and her best friend and her mother both to illness; she went through chemotherapy herself. She's barely five feet tall, but no one ever takes her for a push-over.
I know gentle, even delicate, people who are strong. You can see (if you know how to see) his strength behind a goofy demeanor, you can read her strength in her frail-seeming words. Some of the strongest people walk in a veil of notice-me-not. Some of them, we call survivors, those who have not only gotten through but have also kept going forward.
A palm reader told me, "You've been tested." Perhaps that is why I am drawn to and surround myself with strong people. I have no tolerance for what I perceive as weakness, but what I perceive as weakness varies. Those who don't pay attention, those who don't reason or *think*, hell, people who don't read are, to me, weak. I react in scorn. Laziness in an otherwise healthy body is also weakness: people who drive around the parking lot for 10 minutes looking for a closer parking spot when they are capable of the short walk, people who take the elevator for 1 or 2 short flights, people who don't recycle because "it's one more thing to think about".
However, strength is not defined by the absence of weakness. With all my weaknesses, I think of myself as a strong person. I've crawled out of some deep holes. I think I have a good chance at winning if we were to arm-wrestle. I hold my ground against opposition when I believe that I am right.
Adversity, the saying goes, makes you stronger. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I don't think that's accurate. I think that what doesn't break you proves that you are stronger. We're not bones that get broken and healed over; we're trees that grow each layer through season after season, storm and sun. The ones with poor root growth fail, they don't become mightier.
"Strength of character" is a phrase so often used that the meaning has worn out of it like the snap worn out of over-chewed bubblegum. Character strength is a brilliance made out of the reflected shine from multiple facets. For a strength not to be overpowering, the way unchecked pride becomes obnoxious arrogance instead of admirable self-confidence, the strength needs to be tempered with subtlety. If there is one thing I admire more than the raw ore of strength, it is the gemstone of subtlety.
A friend of mine says that restraint is not control. Control is mastery; it is a light hand on the reins. I find that incredibly sexy, as a trait, as you might guess from my choice of metaphor. ^_~ Undisplayed power is very appealing to me, while constant challenging is off-putting. Those who have tried to take a position of dominance with me have found me repeatedly indifferent (the cat's response of ignoring) until they have pushed too much. I'm willing to ignore that dog-like posturing for a while, but there is a point. The people that I like best and want to be around are the ones who don't have to strut it.
Except every now and again, as in contest against equals, for fun. And sometimes it's nice to be swept off my feet.