An interesting lesson about strength.

You are told by the people that you are very strong, because you keep your wits together and do not fall apart in the time of the crises. It's actually a real quality you possess, because people in your position may not handle the struggles as well as you do. 

But slowly this image of your strength grows beyond you. The image precedes and follows you, and also exists all around you. You start to feel that you have to live upto this image now. And you start negotiating with your human weaknesses. 

The breach between how you feel and how you try to be widens slowly. And this image of your strength collects its cost in the form of your authenticity.

I feel that yet another cliche of life has started to make sense to me. Sometimes true strength is in true vulnerability. In acknowledgement that you are no more special or different from any other person, that your pain is real and it doesn't work to look away from it. At any given time, your image of you must not be greater than the reality of you.