Whatever Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger – Lies! Let’s Try a Rewrite.
This expression just doesn’t make sense to me. Yes, bad experiences CAN make you stronger, but they can also make you weaker – it all depends on your reaction to it. For example, no one could say that having a traumatic childhood makes someone stronger. In fact, usually the opposite is true. Some people can become stronger from it, and can break the cycle, but that is not typical.
I think that "whatever doesn’t kill you" gives you an opportunity to grow personally, but you can also choose not to grow – you can choose to stay the same. Or… you can be not strong enough or aware enough to grow. So – I find this expression pretty useless, especially for people that are going through difficult times. It isn’t helpful. Sometimes people just want to put a happy face on things, which I get, but for me it is better to live in truth.
Here are some possible rewrites:
- Whatever doesn’t kill me gives me the chance to get stronger
- Wouldn’t it be great if this thing that feels like hell but isn’t killing me could make me stronger?
- This thing that isn’t killing me could be the next train to self-improvement, but maybe I will wait for the next train.
That expression is used loosely. It’s origin is in Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols.
“In life’s school of war, that which does not kill us makes us stronger”
One could argue that that as we sustain damage, whether physical or mental we undergo a scarring process. When broken bones mend, they heal back thicker than they were. When a broken heart mends, it grows wary and callous.
If you told someone who was currently entrenched in a difficult time “hey buck up, this is good for you, it will strengthen you” yeah, that would be way out of line and no one would want to hear it, ever.
But in hindsight, all things considered, it is a pretty accurate philosophy.
You see – I don’t think it is accurate. If you break a leg, you are weaker because you can’t walk anymore. If you break a heart, you get callouses as you said, but that does not make you stronger in my opinion because you don’t go into the next relationship with the same energy as you had before.
I think that it CAN make you stronger, but not always. I think it takes a certain amount of strength to grow from bad experiences… and many people do not have that strength at different points in their lives.
Personally I take the view that life doesn’t present us with positive experiences or negative experiences. They’re all just experiences, and whether they make us stronger or weaker, they’re the hands that mould us as human beings.
I think the key is to see life’s hiccups as opportunities to learn. If you can do that, you’ll emerge stronger. If not, if you focus on the pain and sadness, it will make you weaker.
So thinks I, anyway.
Stop thinking of stronger as something that is always better and Friedrich’s play on words makes a little more sense.
Stronger can be a negative outcome. The abused child gets stronger and becomes an abuser, the healed bone is stronger and deformed while the callous heart is stronger but cold.
At the instinctive level, survival is not about betterment, it is about that next breath.
Thanks Greg, that explanation makes a lot of sense.
From my personal experience, in particular, one long 5 year nightmare that still isn’t over yet, I would re-write the saying to be “What doesn’t kill you may wish would have”.