What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

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The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines strength in simply seven short words: the power or ability to resist force. I see this as a very literal definition. But strength is not necessarily defined by physical attributes, or your ability to lift a bar over your head. Emotionally, strength is not defined by how many times you’ve cried when you tried so hard not to, or how many times you’ve broken down and said to yourself, I can’t do this... It is not your past decisions, your failures, or any of your mistakes. Strength is not based on how many tally marks you have scared into your body, and it is not something that can be scored on a scale from one to ten. Strength is a very personal definition to each individual; it can be a person, like your best friend or your grandmother, it can be a thing, like the ring you hold close to you on a silver chain around your neck, given to you by someone important, it can even be a place. Strength can not be defined by any combination of twenty-six letters, or be found in any dictionary; it can only be found in the values, the hearts, and the souls of each human being. Strength is what you make it to be. Mohandas Gandhi once said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” This is an example of one’s personal definition of strength; to this Indian peaceful protester, and activist, forgiveness is apart of being strong. Gandhi is a very obvious example of what strength is; he believed greatly in forgiving those who have done wrong in his eyes. As a part of who Gandhi was, and what it was he did, is was absolutely necessary for him to remain strong for all of his followers, and for the people who looked up to him and practically worshipped the ground he walked on. If you know of Gandhi, you've seen throughout his lifetime he was a mild mannered, forgiving, and strong person. Between fasting for weeks on
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