A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” This quote, attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, means that only facing easy situations in life cannot make one a better person.
In Hindu epics, vanavasa or exile to the forest is an important part of the hero’s journey. The hero is leading a comfortable life from which he is ejected through some inciting incident. He loses the luxuries and comforts of the palace.
No longer are there servants to make everything easy for him. He has to fend for himself. He roams the forests suffering cold and heat and rain and hunger, all the while being afraid of wild animals.
He gains experience and strength, and comes back a bigger hero than he was when he left for the forest. If we look at the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, we see this happening to our heroes. Sri Rama, who was leading a comfortable life as a prince in Ayodhya and was to be the next king, was suddenly forced to go into exile for 14 years.
For his father’s sake, he, along with wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, embraced this suffering. In the forest, Sita was abducted by Ravana. It was not an easy task to bring her back, as Sri Rama did not have the army of Ayodhya to battle Ravana’s army.
Unfazed, he put together a rag-tag army of monkeys and rescued Sita. When he was a young prince at Ayodhya, Sri Rama was just like other young men of his time. Through the ordeal of vanavasa, he elevated himself so much that people started considering him a god.
When the Pandavas were tricked by the Kauravas into losing the game of dice and going into exile, they did not lose heart. They utilised the time to ponder over the events that had happened and learnt from them. They battled Rakshasas and countered the abduction of Draupadi by Jayadratha.
They gathered strength by sending Arjuna to heaven to get divine weapons. After the exile was over, they used the strength gathered over the exile, in terms of divine weapons and allies, to defeat the Kauravas and win back the entire kingdom. Greatness comes from strength of character, and character is not forged in good times.
Character matures through trials and adversity. When we get tested, we find strengths inside us that we may not even have been aware of earlier. We grow in experience and maturity.
As we endure the tough times and bounce back, we experience self-growth. We get a new appreciation for life and its infinite possibilities. The confidence in our personal strength and resilience that we gain from such an experience, helps us take on life’s challenges a new.
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