the Foundation of Strength
Every culture has its stories of triumph, victory, and strength. I tend to always go back to Greek history as not only does it educate on a worldly scale but it’s also what I grew up with. I find it familiar and comforting.
The Greeks have shown through example their ability to triumph with their own personal strength and I don’t mean just physically. It was their mind that created the shield they stood on. Numerous times of being outnumbered and lacking what most thought was needed to prevail yet time and time again we see stories of victory. Why? What made them so different? Were they Gods or superhumans as some stories have written?
The Greeks specifically, the Spartans had an ability to see the strength that was inherently passed down to them rather than a rare gift only a select few can possess. Spartan mothers would teach strength as the backbone to living. The famous words of the spartan mother who sends her boy to war,
“come back with your shield or on it”.
While today, most see this as harsh, coldhearted, and lacking any kind of love, this is the ultimate sign of a mother’s love. A mother preparing the child to fight with all his heart and to believe in his own abilities and his strength can’t compare to any physical training. That mother is instilling the need to fight for what you believe in, to stand tall in the face of hardship, she has prepared him to fight not in hopes of surviving but in an attempt to prevail.
When the Spartans had the help of the Athenians, Leonidis asked the Athenians what is your profession? Each Athenian had different answers: blacksmith, teacher, field worker etc. When Leonidis asked a spartan, any of them, what their profession was, they each had one answer: warriors.
They saw themselves the same way others see them. They were so thoroughly aligned on who they were and what they did, there was no guessing about it. This quality and fortitude has faded but not buried. Many are unsure about how to navigate their life because of this root problem: they don’t know what they’re made of. That’s what strength is, understanding our personal power. Building skills to managing it, directing it, leading it and allowing yourself to be led by it. It is in this intention that the work being done through Strength ID will re-establish the path once set forth by our history.