What does not kill me, makes me stronger - Nietzsche
I recently noticed that its not ‘you’ in the quote its ’me’. Nietzsche refers to himself, knowing he has the capacity to learn from his failings and change himself to be stronger. He knows that he can use the failures as the raw material to provide himself a strength which he never had before. He knows he has the humility to learn.
If we think that anything that affects us detrimentally, by its own happening, makes us stronger, we are wrong. We more often than not, don’t take it as a lesson to constructively build upon. We can ignore it, we can deny it, we can excuse ourselves behind the myriad factors that govern our lives but as long as we don’t actively seek to learn from it, the happening weakens us instead of making us stronger. We lose the opportunity that it generously provides through our lack of humility.