The School of Adversity

It’s human nature to take the easy way, to watch a movie rather than go for a run. To avoid that difficult conversation rather than to initiate it. To present the set of numbers that makes us look best rather than the metrics that are actually most important. Deep down, we know it doesn’t do us any good, but we’d rather feel comfortable than the opposite.

In his classic Book of Pastoral Rule, Gregory the Dialogist encourages his readers

to love adversity for the sake of truth, to shrink in fear from prosperity, for it often defiles the heart by vainglory, but adversity cleanses it by sorrow. In prosperity, the mind becomes conceited; in adversity, even if on occasion it becomes conceited, it abases itself. In prosperity, man forgets who he is; in adversity, he is recalled, even unwillingly and by force, to the recollection of what he is. In prosperity, even his past good works are often brought to nothing; in adversity, faults, even long-standing, are wiped away. It is a common experience that in the school of adversity the heart is forced to discipline itself; but when a man has achieved supreme rule, it is at once changed and puffed up by the experience of his high estate.

There will be times when adversity finds us, when we won’t need to go looking for it. But in those other times, what will we do? Will we choose comfort or the school of adversity?