Trials don't make us great; it's how we respond to them

By Joseph Cramer, MD

Published in the Deseret News

As I write, the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere is digging itself out from under the rubble of a magnitude-7.0 earthquake. The North American plate and the Caribbean tectonic fault crashed and pulled, bringing down both house and man and even a nation. There are many lands of poverty, corruption and violence where children die from diseases Americans have forgotten and parents have never seen. There are hungry adults, parentless children, and there is oppression of all kinds. But Haiti was Hades before the quake; now it is pure hell.

Ah, but trials make us strong, they say. Right? No, problems do not. I am here to tell you that is a fallacy. Troubles themselves do not make us great. Instead it is how we think, act and feel in the face of tribulations that makes us a Lincoln or a Smith, an Esther or a Keller.

Good men die young. Righteous mothers do not survive childbirth; virtuous women are barren; hard-working fathers can't provide for their families. Trials are not limited to the deserving souls. Despots live long; dictators sleep in soft beds and grow fat on silver-platter delicacies not savored by their oppressed; most villains don't get ulcers.

Disasters are neutral. They don't care. They are numb to our cries. Earthquakes, storms, tsunamis are soulless. They result from magma moving and winds blowing and waters rushing. But we are not neutral. We care. We are not numb to the cries of the wounded. Nature has no soul, but we do. It is how we think, act and feel toward each other, our human brothers and sisters, that makes us strong. That is as true of the victim of a cave-in as it is of the liberator of the trapped. Disasters influence both the rescued and the rescuer.

We have never been buried in a fallen building, pulled under by a tsunami or rescued from a rooftop by a National Guard chopper. But we have seen pictures; we have seen the faces and we have had photographs bear witness to the suffering. Therefore, our problem is knowing and still sleeping in clean sheets. We can choose or not choose to do something. Our possible reactions are limitless. We could leave our family and personally bind the wounds. We could dedicate a paycheck or more to the rescue and devote the earnings of that week to the cost of others serving at the epicenter of the crisis. We could give to agencies organized for such catastrophes. We could call upon others to do the same. We can vote for political leaders who act with charity on a governmental scale for those who suffer in our own community. We can show compassion to others who have their own earth-shattering problems: trapped by abusive spouses, not fallen concrete; drowning from drugs, not water; or thirsting for drink or ultimate personal worth.

Still, we are not dirty from the mudslide or hungry from the famine. Can we expect others to be brave when we run from our minuscule fears? The resilience during a crisis is not random. There are characteristics that can be learned and practiced like a character fire drill. Rehearsing solutions to simple problems teaches us to overcome bigger ones, and while problems themselves won't make us great, believing they will does. Believing that trials train us for greatness causes us to react differently when the big one really hits. It is the attitude about challenges that makes solutions possible. It is being able to ask for help when there is no individual hope, only communal survival. It is believing in a purpose to life beyond the moment; it is giving succor when others are hopeless.

Problems are agnostic, inflicting indiscriminately. To Abraham, Joseph, Esther and Helen, it didn't matter; they prevailed. They freed a people, revealed a message, rescued a nation, and saw and heard more clearly because of their problems.