All People Handle Adversity Differently

Dwight Lyman Moody once said, " Character is what you are in the dark." This means that a person's true character is brought forward when they go through challenges. I agree with this quote, when people go through hard times the unimportant things are stripped away, and they have to learn to grow and adapt despite the obstacles they face. In the book "The Hunger Games," Suzanne Collins shows how some people's challenges change them for the better, other characters don't know how to cope and take longer to adapt, and how people's reactions differed from each others.

The most confident people are those to have known failure and misfortune. It is evident that adversity elicits our talents that successful situations could not elicit. However, overcoming obstacles can also elicit our character flaws. Through my study of the memoirs Night and The Glass Castle as well as personal observation, I agree with Horace in that adversity elicits character talents but adversity can also extract our character faults.

Everyday, we go through situations and experiences that affect us in someway, perhaps even change us. Different situations have different effects. The more difficult the situation is, the more of an effect it has on us. Those hard times can be called adversity. How do we, as humans, react to adversity? What are the possible effects it may have?

Overall, adversity is not always something to be avoided. Once someone is affected by adversity in their life, they must keep going and work through it opposed to allowing it to block them permanently. While enduring a difficult time, people are most vulnerable and receptive, making it imperative to properly handle these misfortunes that shape

People allow adversity to rid them of hope. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut highlights the pitfalls of mankind in their perception of love, death, war, and societal norms through the unusually clear lenses of Billy Pilgrim. Pilgrim’s acceptance towards life relieves him of the weight of the world; however, even Pilgrim is unable to remain indifferent about war. Billy Pilgrim encounter with the Tralfamadorians granted him an extraterrestrial way of thinking.

Similar to a cactus’ bloom in the heat of the desert, through adversity humanity prospers and processes. Society, as a whole, has experienced, at least once, hardships in their lifetime, and through these trying situations people acquire compassion. Being familiar with challenges, people more readily accepts the distress of others and offer required assistance during times of difficulty. Although adversity is seen as the creator of contempt and hatred because of its negative effects on mentality, adversity fosters compassion through the creation of empathy, morality, and association in a person with others in a calamity.

Hardships have the power to make a break a person, as Roman poet, Horace, once said, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant”. Everyone has or will have to face adversity at some point in their lives, it is a universal truth. Although misfortunes usually have a negative connotation, depending on the struggle and how one deals with it, it is likely the person will come out of misfortune better prepared for the world. Contrastly, if a person never experienced any hardships, they would lack a sophisticated understanding of the world and lack the ability to handle difficult situations. Adversity gives people strength they can not obtain with success.

will be my own share of adversity in which I will need to look myself in the mirror and ask

Some thrive under the pressure and come out on top, while others crumble. In the book Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, the main character Brian, is faced with a conflict that most people would struggle coming through. He is on his way to his father’s place, when the pilot of the private plane he is riding in suddenly dies. The plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, and Brian is left to fend for himself until help arrives. Brian, unlike many people, is not daunted by the prospect of having the survive on his own. He faces his problem head on and with a positive attitude. He has to handle various species of wildlife and deadly environmental phenomena, but he does not let himself crumble. He survives and eventually makes it back home to his mother. This kind of conflict is an example of a man versus nature conflict, one of the hardest kinds to work through. Because Brian met the conflict head on, had a positive attitude, and reasoned his way through it, he not only survived, he thrived. If Brian would have let himself become discouraged, he would have died. He wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to be able to work through the conflict. In conclusion, meeting conflict head on with a positive attitude is the way that a person is most likely to work through

On the other hand, the one who takes it, he may suffer but he may endure and may even prevail. And yet, there are countless instances when he may choose to persist in quietly carrying the load... until he eventually perishes under its ever-growing weight. Natural selection favors the guy whose genes drive him to have the correct reactions.

It was as if the sky was on fire. Red and orange flames painted over the once clear blue canvas and burned. Fog enclosed the area like smoke and ash. No one would bother to notice the sun, weary from burning high in the atmosphere begin to settle. November was coming. Shorter days were creeping up on them. Cold air would soon envelop the region and the year would repeat itself.

Adversity has a way of bringing up challenges unexpectedly, most people shrink away from it and get consumed, but when they push through it people come out stronger than they were before.

From the day, the first motor vehicle was invented, the inventors did not realize that alcohol would become a problem for drivers. Although people tried taking keys away and designated drivers, fatalities involving drunk drivers continued to rise. With the advancement in technology, there had to be a way to prevent vehicles from being started if a person was under the influence of alcohol. Even though convicted drunk driving offenders already receive fines and jail time, ignition interlocks should be mandatory for all convicted drunk driving offenders because ignition interlocks reduce alcohol-related traffic crashes and ignition interlocks

Adversity puts people in difficult or unpleasant situations which can create very strong emotions that can help or harm. When people face adversity, it is seen as a challenge and whether or not they overcome the challenge is personal. However regardless of whether adversity helps or harms, it is advantageous because it offers a challenge to overcome which builds character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous poet once quoted the following, “For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.” Anger as we all know can be a very powerful emotion that can have many different effects, firstly on the person that is experiencing the emotion, secondly the person or persons who is around the said anger filled individual. However, the intention of this paper is not to focus on anger, but to focus on the persuasion that people can use when giving speeches or in this case, preaching. John Edwards, a preacher in the new world takes the time to diligently preach his congregation, this is now the writing we know as, Sinners in the hand of an Angry God. While exploring this piece of writing, it is important to note that John Edwards uses many ways to persuade his congregation to believe that God is angry. The keys to his persuasion are as following, the people are out of God’s grace, they are wicked, and everyone has committed a sin.