Facing Adversity
Using difficulties as opportunities for growth.
Adversity tests and develops character. The cultivated person uses difficulty as opportunity. Poverty, criticism, and hardship can strengthen virtue when approached correctly.
Only in winter do we know the pine and cypress remain green.
True character is revealed and developed in difficulty.
Analects
Written about in
- What Confucianism says about failure
Only in winter do we know the pine and cypress remain green. Hardship is treated as the instrument that reads character, which implies a life without failure has left the question unanswered.