What doesn't kill us makes us stronger

As a kid, I mistakenly thought this phrase referred to edible things. "If you eat it and you don't die, it fortifies your immune system and makes you stronger." Ha.. silly kids..

As I gain more life experience though, I realize the validity of the statement and how profound it actually is. The most fascinating people I've ever met, the people that seem to be in on a secret about life that the rest of humanity is desperately trying to figure out, are the people that have experienced tragedy and have been able to rise above it. Not only that, but they are some of the most selfless people I know. In trying to figure out what the correlation is between experienced hardship and selflessness, I figure that a lot of it has to do with the perception of the world you form as you mature. People with shitty childhoods for instance realize early on that mere existence does not guarantee happiness. Happiness isn't thrown down in front of you for you to indulge. Instead, happiness is something you must choose to create. What's the most effective/efficient way of creating happiness? Making others happy. This manifests in different ways - you become more empathetic and want to help others, you want to make family members happy so you take on extra burden, you try to make something of yourself so that you can contribute something positive to a situation.

The older you get, the more venues to creating happiness open. Not only can you help family but you can help strangers too. And really good friends are as good as family to you, consequently you'll go out of your way to make them happy when you can. Realizing this, I almost cringe when I think of how a lot of Americans are these days. So selfish, so individualistic.. soo.. useless. It makes me want to start a nationwide campaign "Why do you matter?" where every individual American is questioned about why they think they exist, and what the purpose of their life is. No wonder foreigners hate Americans. Don't get me wrong, they love America - the land of opportunity. They hate Americans - people who feel entitled to everything life has to offer despite their poor contribution to the betterment of anything.

Moreover, I realize why some people hate religion. Religion gives believers a false sense of being a "good" person. But a lot of religious people are good by association. Just b/c so and so "said" some good things and did some good things doesn't mean you too are a good person. Its almost a false sense of identity. You are not a good person unless you do good, period. And the likelihood of you doing good is based on whether or not you want to do good. Studies in psychology show that people are more likely to do something if intrinsically motivated rather than if they are extrinsically motivated. You ain't gonna "respect thy neighbor" or abstain from "coveting someone else's wife" unless you truly want to.

I also think that these days culture itself is a sort of religion - giving people a false sense of how good of a person they are. Harping back to Americans as an example, I don't think we realize how completely selfish we can be. But because everyone around us is a barometer for our selfishness, if we can find one person who we deem to be worse than us in some way, we're ok with ourselves. But that's as retarded as Jessica Simpson claiming not to be a coke head because Lindsay Lohan does way more coke than she does.. whichever way you slice it, you still do coke Jess.

I once heard a joke about how in the future Americans will be dying to get visas to India and beg to become Indian citizens. Why? B/c it seems that a lot of developing countries have what America doesn't have - real sense of tragedy. No it's not tragic that you got dumped yesterday. It is tragic that a tsunami came an took your livelihood away, that terrorist bombers were successful in yet another mission. And it is experiencing this tragedy that makes citizens of developing countries want to do better for themselves so they can do better for others. And slowly but surely, before anyone knows it, they possess so much intellectual and brute power that they become a force in their own right. Now I understand why great powers never stay great, there is always a collapse or a new super power.. eventually. It's b/c the country stopped struggling, with power and peace came complacency.. and while people of the superpower nation were lounging around, struggling nations became stronger.. hm..

But I digress.. I guess in all of this I'm recognizing that hey, life sucks, and it sucks even harder for some. But for those who haven't had it easy, there is some solace to be taken in the fact that b/c of your struggle, you'll become a much stronger person, a person who can help the weaker individuals.. in a way its like being a martyr (sorta). You had to go through a shitty life to realize that helping others in any way you could was 1000 times better than being selfish, consequently you then stand as an example for others to follow.. keeping the world from peril.. sorta :)