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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 7651335" data-attributes="member: 8835">How about we meet in the middle and agree that some things that don't kill you may make you stronger in some ways, but other things that don't kill you may leave you weaker than you were before.basically, your mileage may vary depending on the nature of the incident, the damage it causes and the person's recovery/adaptation from it.I got a friend who got to over 300 pounds and was diagnosed with diabetes.  They put him on a diet and some drugs and he's now 220 pounds in SIX months and he is now no longer classified with diabetes.You can easily say the disease didn't kill him and he got stronger from it.  In fact, for practical purposes, I don't think he suffered in any way that a diabetic worries about during his time in that category.I think the real world is chock full of people who have suffered cascade failures/problems that most assuredly have not left them stronger than they were before.  I know Rel subscribes to the "avoid negative thinking and negative people" school of thought, but to insist otherwise is to belittle their experience and situation.Furthermore, I would question the evidence that an catastrophic problem can/does make a person stronger.  It would not be simple to run a side by side comparison of a person with and without the degradation event to see which becomes stronger in the end.However, Levitz work described in Freakonomics indicates Nature holds more influence on a child's success than Nurturing exposure.  Therefore, a child's initial circumstances (the setback) do not as fully impact his getting stronger, as compared to the genetic combination of his parents in yielding an exceptional child.Case in point, a child in a bad Chicago school district applies to attend a better school district.  It turns out, that statistically speaking, those children who applied, will excel, regardless of whether they are approved for the better school or remain stuck in the poor school.  This is because they posess greater genetic traits that are appreciative of better education than their non-escape-attempting peers.As a result, being poor and attending a crappy school as their "setback' did not make them stronger.  They already possessed the inner qualities to excel, as compared to their downtrodden peers.  The statistics say they were just as successful whether they actually got a better start in life or not.My point, is that while I appreciate folks keeping a positive attitude and finding the good from the bad, taken to an extreme it can be disingenuous and disrespectful to those suffering real hardship that were not blessed with the ability and opportunity to get better.  While there is good value to "surrounding yourself with positive people who don't bring you down with constant negativity", taken to the extreme, you become an elitist who isolates himself from the lesser masses.  There is a trend, that unfortunately bleeds into politics, to blame those who are unable to overcome their problems as their own fault, which denies that their circumstances are a slippery slope that few are able to escape.So, I ask, that while Rel wants to keep a positive outlook, that we also accept and acknowledge that not everybody gets a positive outcome, regardless of their personal outlook.  Life is not that simple.</blockquote>

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