I think I'm reasonably, though not wonderfully, good at dealing with pressure and I can tell you I don't feel remotely diamond-hard when I survive the stuff. I just feel vaguely stupid for having carved out a life that sometimes subjects me to it. And when I see its ill-effects on others, something I've been horribly aware of just recently in quite a few cases, I feel a kind of quiet despair that we've managed to constuct a world in which we routinely arrange for people to be miserable and then blame it on some supposed defect of their characters.
We're not a hard species. We're soft and squishy and easily bruised, even if we pretend not to be. And that's good.
1 comment:
It infuriates me too, as a chemist. Here's why. When you take a lump of coal and put it under extreme pressure and high temperature, it turns into an ugly lump of diamond that is much smaller and harder.
Later on, assuming you dig that ugly thing out of the ground, you have to cut and polish it for days just to get it to look presentable. Then it has to go hang around the neck of someone in order to demonstrate whatever worth it has. Or else it is useless except when used as a cutting or drilling tool.
Drill and practice, indeed. :D
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