What Is Strength?

"How do you judge strength?"

"Pardon?"

"How do you judge strength?"

"What do you mean by strength?"

"I mean in media you hear about people with strength all the time, the strength to move on, the strength to get by certain situations."

"You mean strength of will?"

"You can also have a muscle bound person who's addicted to steroids who you see and you think he must be strong, but at the same time he could be considered weak.  I mean where does strength end and weakness begin?"

"Well everyone has their strengths and weaknesses."

"Yes, but what constitutes strength?  How can you judge if someone's weak or strong?  If you commit suicide, does that mean you were a weak person?  If you can barely get out of bed from pain or some other reason, does that make you weak?  I mean, that would make you weaker than me, right?"

"I suppose if that's how you see strength."

"But if I flaunt my strength at someone weaker, I could be considered petty and in a sense weak myself."

"I guess that's one way to look at it."

"In those terms then is anyone really considered weak or strong anymore?  Is there a defining line that says this person's strong or this person's weak?"

"Generally in societies, strength's considered ideal and weakness is considered taboo.  I imagine what constitutes strength and weakness is determined by the trends of society."

"How can you judge people like that, though?  If you persevere through defeat after defeat, failure after failure, under constant pressure from people around you and lack of support to the point where you're worn down past the breaking point, and you've had it easy through your life trying and succeeding at everything you do, how can you judge the other person for that?  I mean that's an extreme scenario, but how can you blame someone who's tried for their failure, or someone who's tried for their success?  Do we really have that right?"

"I think that's a bit off from the question of whether someone's strong or not, but I get your point.  Well, if you're gonna put it that way, I'll try putting it another way.  If a criminal kills someone for whatever reason, he gets sent to court where he gets a jury who decide whether he's innocent or not, and a judge who decides what happens if said person is viewed as guilty by said peers.  Now, assuming no one in the jury or the judge himself has killed anyone, do you think they have a right to judge said murderer?"

"That's an entirely different scenario, though.  You don't know the circumstances under which the person killed the other person, so it gets a lot harder to judge the murderer's intent."

"One, how is that different?  You didn't give a lot of detail on your example yourself.  And two, should it matter?"

"An emotionally distraught person is capable of things they normally wouldn't consider."

"And?  How does that excuse them from their actions?  How does that excuse the consequences of said actions?  I didn't mean to do it?  I got caught up in the moment?  I admit everyone has their moment of weakness, maybe strength should be considered taking responsibility for your weakness, despite how bad it is."

"How do you go about taking responsibility for your weakness then?  I mean, do you just go 'I'm weak.  There, I said it' or is it more of a paying for your crimes sort of thing.  And if it's paying for your crimes, what exactly should be the payment?"

"I guess everyone has their values."

"Yes, but, for example, the value of life.  That can change from person to person.  Sometimes it's a few years in prison, other times it's a death sentence.  Can a life really be paid for in years?"

"One can only hope.  So what does this have to do with strength?"

"Well, if we can't even agree on the worth of one's life, can we really accurately decide someone's strength?"

"No one said we were doing this accurately."

"But we are doing it."

"People are flawed, and we don't even realize to what extent.  Once you figure that out, you begin to find uncertainty in everything.  People have ideas, and we try to define these ideas. Some people are better at it than others, but in the end it's fool's gold.  It might look valuable but it's really not."

"But if there's fool's gold, then where's the real gold?"

"I guess there has to be real gold out there, but can you say for certain what's real and what isn't?"

"I could ask you the same thing.  You haven't really given me a definitive answer on anything."

"Well you haven't really asked me any definitive questions."

"How about my first one, what's strength?"

"Like it's been said, there're a lot of ideas about what strength is or isn't, I don't really consider myself a person to be able to define it."

"Well, what do you think it then?  I mean, I understand you don't want to say what strength in general is, but what's your personal idea of strength?"

"Well, the dictionary describes strength as something durable, tough.  It could also be intensity, potency, pretty wide range of words, but more or less strength refers to how effective something is.  I guess that's how I'd define it."

"But I see people who are broken and emotionally distraught called strong for being able to get on with their normal lives after going through something tragic.  It seems to me they've come out worse for it, how can you consider them any stronger than what you might've before in a situation like that?"

"Like I said, people are flawed, more so than most people realize.  People like to find their own definitions of things, and you have to understand things like words come predefined.  Trying to find meaning for something that already has a definition is like my earlier example of someone trying to find gold not realizing they can only find fool's gold."

"I don't remember anything about you saying we can only find fool's gold.  You even said there's gotta be real gold."

"I can dream, can't I?  I know I said there's gotta be real gold, but I'll admit that's really just me being optimistic.  I wanna think there's something with value out there in a philosophical sense, but really who can tell?"

"Philosophical sense?"

"Well yeah, there're other things out there that I would consider valuable, but when it comes to philosophy things tend to be too hazy for me to even figure out."
"I have to ask something else.  You said you didn't feel you could define strength, yet you said it's predefined."

"That was before I looked in the dictionary."

"......."

"Well, I'll leave off with a pretty deep philosophical point I couldn't find room for here but was touched upon in the conversation.  I said people were flawed cause we try to define things we can't.  Like the weight of one's life, I don't really think there can be a real way to pay that off.  I mean you can serve all the time you want, you can get your life taken away, but really, how does that make up for murder?  What penance is there for taking something away you can't give back?  Something that wasn't yours to take in the first place?  I guess we can try, and although it's a flawed idea I think it's a beautiful thing that we can.  When we know there's no right direction, but we try and find our way there anyways, is one of the great things about humanity in my opinion.  Hey, are you even still listening?"

"Huh, wha'?  Uh yeah, beautiful dude."

"Then what'd I say?"

"I don't know, but it was beautiful dude.  Now leave me alone, I'm trying to sleep."

"......."