Open Writing

Adversity—condition of adverse fortune, misfortune

At University College, London, as chaplain to the college, I used to meet students following up my own interests. This seemed to me the most natural way of approach. Being musical I used to sing in the college choir.

After the first week or so, I met a member of the choir in the lunch queue in the lower refectory. He was a fresher, and terribly lonely and depressed. His home was in Suffolk. It was his first time away from home, and the transition from village life to the heart of London was just too much for him. He had no friends. He was feeling utterly miserable. He was reading law and felt he had made a mistake in his choice of subject. In short he was right up against adversity. I saw him a number of times over the next week or so. He eventually requested to leave college, take a year out, and hoped to try again next year. His plans were to work in a Rudolf Steiner School for handicapped young people in Switzerland, and try to work through his depression.

The following February there was a knock on my door, and there he was. Relaxing over a cup of coffee he explained he had suddenly realized in Switzerland that the subject he really wanted to read was history, not law, and wondered if I could do anything to effect the transition. As it happened one of the history lecturers had been a contemporary at Balliol College. I rang him, arranged a meeting, and he was accepted there and then for the following year. On his return to UCL, he never looked back and even went on to become a history teacher.

Sooner or later, we all come up against adversity in some shape or form. If faced with courage and determination, it can be put to good use and in turn be a great source of hope.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Psalm 46:1

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4

... Turning past evils to advantages.
William Shakespeare, II King Henry IV, IV. iv. 78

He knows himself, and all that's in him, who knows adversity.
Herman Melville, Mardi, The New American Library of World Literature, 1964, page 491

.. .those
That would make good of bad and friends of foes.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, II. iv. 40

God makes the life fertile by disappointment, as He makes its ground fertile by frost.
Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, Charles Burnet & Co., 1887, page 209

Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, III. ill, 55

Henceforth I'll bear Affliction till it do cry out itself 'Enough, enough,' and die.
William Shakespeare, King Lear, IV. vi. 74

All torment, trouble, wonder, and amazement, Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us Out of this fearful country!
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, V. i. 103

Affliction is the good man's shining scene!
Prosperity conceals his brightest ray;
As Night to stars, Woe lustre gives to man.
Edward Young, 'Night Thoughts', Night ix, in The Complete Works of Edward Young William Tegg and Co.,
1854, page 195

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', Part 11, in Ernest Hartley Coleridge, editor, The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1975, volume I, page 209

Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.
Sir Walter Scott, The Talisman, Oxford University Press, 1912, page 168

... yet famine,
Ere clean it o'erthrow nature, makes it valiant. Plenty, and peace, breeds cowards; hardness ever Of hardiness is mother.
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, III. vi. 19

Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud, And after summer evermore succeeds Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold; So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.
William Shakespeare, 11King Henry VI, II. iv. 1

He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself. Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For, as it surrounds us with friends, who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.
Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, William Tegg, 1866, page 5

I have touched the highest point of all my greatness, And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more.
William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III. ii. 223

The Gods, in bounty, work up storms about us,
That give mankind occasion to exert
Their hidden strength, and throw out into practice
Virtues, which shun the day, and lie conceal'd In the smooth seasons and the calms of life.
Joseph Addison, Cato, II. iv. 54, in A.C. Guthkelch, editor, The Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Addison, G. Bell and Sons, Volume 1, 'Poems and Plays', page 379

... who never heard the voice of reproof, or felt the keen blast of the wintry wind, is usually a slave to himself, and a tyrant to his vassals; while, on the contrary, he that, by adversity, has been taught that he is no more than his fellows, treats his dependents with gentleness, and becomes a blessing to all.
Elizabeth Helme, St. Margaret's Cove: or, The Nun's Story, printed for Earle and Hement, 1801, page 122

... as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say...
These are counsellors...
And this our life...
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II. i. 5

Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man; today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls as I do.
William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III. ii. 351

I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs; he trod the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head
'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared
Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke
To th'shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bowed...
He came alive to land.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, II. i. 109

The virtue of prosperity, is temperance; the virtue of adversity, is fortitude: which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater Benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour... and the pencil of the holy ghost, hath laboured more, in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, Clarendon Press, 1985, page 18

I am sick—if I should die what would become of me? We forget ourselves and our destinies in health, and the chief use of temporary sickness is to remind us of these concerns. I must improve my time better. I must prepare myself for the great profession I have purposed to undertake. I am to give my soul to God and withdraw from sin and the world the idle or vicious time and thoughts I have sacrificed to them; and let me consider this as a resolution by which I pledge myself to act in all variety of circumstances, and to which I must recur often in times of carelessness and temptation, to measure my conduct by the rule of conscience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, Constable & Co., 1909, volume I, page 78

Why then, you princes,
Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our works And call them shames, which are, indeed, naught else But the protractive trials of great Jove To find persistive constancy in men; The fineness of which metal is not found In fortune's love? For then the bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, seem all affin'd and kin. But in the wind and tempest of her frown, Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, Puffing at all, winnows the light away; And what hath mass or matter, by itself Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I. iii. 17