I've always associated adversity to the Shackleton's Imperial Trans-antartic expedition: I've first encountered the story some 10 years ago when I've red a copy of Alfred Lansing's Endurance. A few years later I've red a book entitled From adversity by Santiago Alvarez de Mon that associated overcoming adversity with the idea that success, or happiness, is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience.
Today I've watched Aimee Mullins conference: The opportunity of adversity. In her opinion we are in fact, changed by adversity, marked, of course, by a challenge, whether physically, emotionally or both. Adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It's part of our life. It's not about devaluing, or negating, these more trying times as something we want to avoid or sweep under the rug, but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity. And, perhaps, if we see adversity as natural, consistent and useful,we're less burdened by the presence of it. Adversity gives us, a sense of self, a sense of our own power. So, we can give ourselves a gift. Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.
