Strength is not simply brute. It can't always be measured in food pounds or watts. Sometimes it is immeasurable, even invisible. Silence, patience and focus are forms of strength; so are effort, intensity and the ability to confront pain and sit with it. Strength is also seen in whimsy, expansion without fear, a large capacity for pleasure, an angry word withheld, compassion, a smile at an adversary, laughter relieving tension, the eye of a hurricane, a flower growing out of a rock.
Strength is not just victory, but the ability to fail with interity and take the lessons of losing and weakness as opportunities to learn. Like love and wisdon, strength can never be bought or borrowed. Like the earth, it can never be owned but it can be lived in and cultivated. To keep it we must be constantly engaged in the search for it. When we think we've found it and need look no more, we are weakened immediately. And if we use it to bring harm against another in a show of force, then we are not truly expressing strength but power over - which earns us a cheap win, passing glory. There's no victory in that because it brings no knowledge. Such power fades after the rounds are fired. Strength, however; when it is slowly, carefully constructed, with failure and frustration as part of the soup, can endure as legend, even beyond our lifetimes.
Such strength comes only with patience, application and honest self-assessment. True strength, by its very definition, cannot come quickly. Overnight strength is simply a mirage - no drugs, money or fame can get it for us, only seeking.
For strength to last, it must come in natural rythm and its purpose must be linked to something greater than just a passing wish or a trophy for the ego. When it is hitched to a dream others can share, it gathers momentum and grows. Each of us already owns a piece of it. It grows stronger when we offer it freely in exchange. Living in strength gives us no need to wear armor, but the courage to reveal ourselves as we are.
From Karen Andes' A Woman's Book of Strength
Strength is not just victory, but the ability to fail with interity and take the lessons of losing and weakness as opportunities to learn. Like love and wisdon, strength can never be bought or borrowed. Like the earth, it can never be owned but it can be lived in and cultivated. To keep it we must be constantly engaged in the search for it. When we think we've found it and need look no more, we are weakened immediately. And if we use it to bring harm against another in a show of force, then we are not truly expressing strength but power over - which earns us a cheap win, passing glory. There's no victory in that because it brings no knowledge. Such power fades after the rounds are fired. Strength, however; when it is slowly, carefully constructed, with failure and frustration as part of the soup, can endure as legend, even beyond our lifetimes.
Such strength comes only with patience, application and honest self-assessment. True strength, by its very definition, cannot come quickly. Overnight strength is simply a mirage - no drugs, money or fame can get it for us, only seeking.
For strength to last, it must come in natural rythm and its purpose must be linked to something greater than just a passing wish or a trophy for the ego. When it is hitched to a dream others can share, it gathers momentum and grows. Each of us already owns a piece of it. It grows stronger when we offer it freely in exchange. Living in strength gives us no need to wear armor, but the courage to reveal ourselves as we are.
From Karen Andes' A Woman's Book of Strength
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