“ The graveyard is the richest place on earth. It is here you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled.”

-Les Brown

It is not uncommon for strength to be under-rated. Its daily colloquial use and assumed understanding of the collective makes it easy to overlook. Yet when I take a closer look at what makes someone not only successful and also happy about it versus someone has it all together but is lacking everywhere else: it comes down to the use of strength.

Many use strength on a ratio. Most of its use is reserved only for when it is really needed. This means emergencies, deadlines, heart-pumping situations and near-death incidents. The irony is it’s always needed. We’ve simply all been conditioned that it’s not just for everyday functioning.

I’ve come across two states people are in when it comes to using strength unproductively without knowing it. The Martinets and the Marionettes.

The Martinets are people who have it all together so they think there’s no need to consider developing strength as a powerful life tool. These are people who are great at following the rules and expectations that were handed to them. Everyone turns to them because they can solve anything. They are usually engulfed in the details of their everyday life and pat themselves on the back for going through the grind.

When I zoom out of these people’s lives to say 5 or 10 years out, I find they’re standing still. They do what they’ve always done and nothing changes. Every once in a while, they have moments when they see other people progress with their talents and quietly wonder, what about me?

Having all your sh*t together has nothing to do with strength. This lifestyle is laden with submission. Submitting to the rules & expectations around them. Submitting one’s talent card up on a shelf to prop up everyone else.

The other state I see are what I call the Marionettes. These people approach life where sadness and tragedy is set up on a shrine by which they live life by. They revere it to the point that it is their reason to skate through life not doing much because well, they’ve already gone through so much. Even though some of their everyday behaviors don’t contribute to their betterment to the point of disruption, they continue on because of their blind reverie to the “thing that occurred”.

Despite the difference between the two, the result is the same. It perpetuates forsaking God-given gifts and talents for survival. It surrenders developing who we are meant to be for who we are expected to be. It results in dissatisfaction, exhaustion and wasted money. Hence when Les Brown says, “The graveyard is the richest place on earth. It is here you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled.” This is rooted in misdirected use of an innate gift we all have: strength.