In my home of Northern Ohio, we’ve had our share of windy days this summer, and the upcoming fall will probably have more of the same. The wind can be, not just an inconvenience, but downright destructive. This past spring, my poor neighbors lost the siding on almost the entire side of their house, with the remnants of it blowing through their yard and ours. Of course, wind can wreak even more havoc on buildings than that, sometimes flattening them altogether.
Despite its potential hazards, wind offers many benefits to the environment around us. According to an article published by Michigan State University, wind plays a vital role in pollination, scattering pollen throughout the atmosphere so that it will fertilize an egg and germinate into a seed. Along with that, its force strengthens plants, which release a hormone called auxin that stimulates the growth in the stem. It has a similar effect on trees, and even when the wind brings one down in the woods, that can promote the overall health of the forest, which thrives on having a variety of trees of different ages.
For the many healthy varieties that are able to sustain such forces, the wind resistance they encounter will enhance their flexibility. Diverse Daily states, “The primary elements contributing to a tree’s wind resistance are its trunk flexibility and root strength. The trunk acts as a lever; its ability to bend rather than break under excessive wind pressure is vital. Trees have developed flexible trunks that can sway with the wind, reducing the amount of stress they endure during severe weather conditions. This bending motion allows the tree to absorb and dissipate wind energy, thereby minimizing damage to both the trunk and the branches.” It adds that some trees in hurricane hotspots can remain standing in gusts of over 100mph.
If nature can thrive through the adversity of hurricane winds, can we humans be shaped in a positive way by storm-like adversities?
One man who can attest to this to a great degree is actor Michael J. Fox. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease decades ago, Fox has maintained his optimism through his battle with the debilitating condition and has devoted much of his life to facilitating research through his foundation. In 2024, Time Magazine™ awarded him with their Impact Award while honoring the year’s top 100 influential people.
During his acceptance speech, Fox spoke of his father, who also suffered from Parkinson’s. He recounted that his dad used to say he earned a Masters Degree from the University of Adversity, teasing that he himself was a legacy student of the school. He carried the illustration further, remarking that “every class…is an AP philosophy course.”
To piggyback off of the witty insights, you don’t enroll in this university, just as trees don’t decide when and how they want the wind to blow. Rather, adversity comes to you with the admission papers, often at random, unexpected moments when you’re not seeking a crash course in such a subject. Though you didn’t sign up for it, you have to choose whether or not to learn from it or suffer through it and take a flunking grade.
Unlike trees and plants, we aren’t programmed to naturally grow stronger from adversity. Sure, we have hormones to respond to stress, but our free will allows us to decide how we emotionally handle it. Granted, we all have different makeup and sometimes conditions that govern our response, just as some varieties of trees aren’t as equipped to sustain wind resistance as others.
Be that as it may, none of us can hide from adversity. We may not want to leap into adverse circumstances with reckless abandonment, nor would we deliberately try to inflict adversity on others to toughen them up. When we do confront it, however, wouldn’t we prefer to take the education it can provide, rather than have to repeat the course again with no knowledge of its prior lessons?
Despite not having the same structure and mechanics of a tree, we can allow adversity to make us more flexible. In many cases, we encounter adversity because we have one set way of wanting to do something, but adversity of some kind swoops in and denies us access. That can move us to change the direction we’re going or make us adapt the tactic we’re accustomed to using. Those skills will serve us well when other challenges come along and may even train us in a better technique than we employed before.
Thus, adversity isn’t necessarily our favorite concept or learning institution, but its force can shape us for the better if we follow its sometimes-grueling syllabus. Not only can it strengthen us and make us more flexible, but it can enable us to help others through their adversities, as well. To close his speech, Fox summed up what his University of Adversity philosophy class taught him, quoting Albert Camus, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
