"Scattered Thoughts Diabolical and Immoral"

When you're struggling through distressing times, there's nothing like a smug quote on adversity to make you feel worse. Here are a few supremely unhelpful thoughts from great minds on the topic and my churlish responses:

1) "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
— Anne Bradstreet from her 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' in 1655.

Can you imagine the moxie it must take to title your random thoughts "Meditations Divine and Moral?" If I were to choose a similar name for my memoir, I"d call it "Broodings Cranky and Self-indulgent." Did she think of the title first, and then cast around for thoughts that could live up to that title? Such pressure!

And that whole "you must suffer through winter to appreciate spring" stuff sounds ridiculous anyway. I live in San Francisco now and consider its lack of seasons a huge benefit. I don't need to shovel snow for five months to appreciate flowers. I enjoy a nice daffodil as much as anyone.

2) "Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

I have serious problems with this quote, which looks like a fancy Renaissance way of saying "That which does not kill you only makes you stronger." Apparently if you take a nice, good person and crush her like a bundle of tarragon leaves, her virtues are supposed to shine all the stronger. I contend if you take a calm, thoughtful, nice, caring girl and give her a chronic disease, a foreclosure, some hefty medical bills and a cheating boyfriend, she won't be so nice and calm anymore. Let's add a crazy boss and a loser nephew who sleeps on her couch for three months too. I'm not saying adversity can't be a learning experience -- I think it depends on the person. If our poor Tarragon Girl was snooty, entitled and self-satisfied, obsessed with decorating her house and unsympathetic to sick people, well then a little adversity could only help. Hmm, maybe I'm proving Frank's point here after all.

Here are two adversity quotes from unknown authors:

1) "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude or the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security."

I was actually with this one, until it started going on about martyrs' "loftiness of purpose."

2) "Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with."

Yeah, yeah, we all know it's the speck of grit that makes the pearl, etc. etc.

So learn from these four quotes about adversity. Time to get off your sofa and go get crushed!