Deep Scene Analysis, “The Hard Makes the Great”

If you haven’t seen it yet Its own competitionyou should.

It is based on the true circumstances of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) which existed from 1943 to 1954. There is a very memorable scene where one of the players and team leaders plans to leave the team at the moment her husband returns from England. the war – especially just before the championship game. In a classic scene, he challenges her not with her life decision to leave baseball behind, but to leave the game and her team under these conditions.

This quote often comes to mind:

“It should be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard makes it great.”

There’s so much happening on this line. I previously wrote about Theodore Roosevelt On a Life Lived Well, who urged us that “nothing in the world is worth having or doing unless it means effort, pain, or difficulty.”

It’s hard to deny that the adversities we face make us grow and give us perspective. To be exceptional indeed means to be the exception. Epictetus’s extricating analogy for adversity as character building comes to mind when he reminds us that “the true man reveals himself in difficult times” and that adversity can be the ultimate crucible—and he lays down the analogy:

“So when trouble comes, think of yourself as a wrestler whom God, like a trainer, has paired with a tough young buck. With what purpose? To turn you into Olympic-class material. But it will take some sweat to make this happen. From my perspective, no one’s difficulties have ever provided him with a better test than yours, if you are willing to take advantage of them as a wrestler takes advantage of an opponent in peak condition.”

Indeed, it is the difficult that makes us great. Just like running a marathon: if everyone did it, it wouldn’t be great. Seneca makes a similar point about unhappiness, urging us that “no one is more unhappy than he who never meets with adversity, because he is not allowed to prove himself.” We prove ourselves through great achievements and grow through the difficulty – and betray our potential by avoiding it.

Bruce Lee challenged us that glory is achieved in the goal of greatness. Far from being a crime (for ‘in great endeavors it is even glorious to fail), failure is ‘a low aim is the crime’. Reaching our potential should be difficult – and growth is rarely found in what is comfortable. Ideas, muscles and character are strengthened by resistance and setbacks.

Perhaps this is why David Goggins urges us to “stay tough.” He reminds us that “the only way you gain mental toughness is by doing things you are not happy with. If you keep doing things that satisfy you and make you happy, you will not become stronger.” In short: “the only way to get tougher is to put yourself in hellish situations.”

For Roosevelt, it is not dignified with effort, pain or difficulty – as dignified requires to deserve. And from Goggins to Lee to the Stoic philosophers, we are reminded that we only grow and reach our potential when we are uncomfortable.

Staying tough is the key, because it’s what’s tough that makes us great.

Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on Unsplash