Essays

This Shakespearean proverb challenges the fear of a common man who falls on difficult days. Usually, people prefer prosperity to adversity. No one wants to live in difficult circumstances, where life seems to be a burden, full of woes, sorrows and suffering. Life seems to be a yoke unable to carry and hear during adversity. On the other hand, everyone wants to live perpetually in prosperous times when life seems a bed of rose's. full of joy, happiness, pleasure and beauty. But we rarely realize that without bitterness, sweetness has no existence; without black, white has no colour and without hardships, joy has no meaning.

Prosperity brings infinite friends, great money and high status. Virtue is forgotten, rather prosperity becomes the only virtue. Society too looks up to a man in prosperity. On the other hand, when adversity strikes at one's door the man is looked down upon, is forsaken and forgotten by his very own dear friends, Hence, the great dramatist of England came to the conclusion that there are a number of sweet uses of adversity. The statement on a cursory glance seems paradoxical. But on a deeper thought and a closer look, one is amazed at the storehouse of the writer's wisdom and experience.

No matter how detestable and disagreeable adversity seems to people, no matter how bitter it tastes and how unwelcome it is at every doorstep, yet the poet tells us that adversity is not without any use, The experiences on a shallow look may seem bitter during adverse limes, yet the poet tells us that its uses are sweet Life would be dull and uninteresting without any shades and hues of different colours. Night follows day, winter is followed by spring, like it varies the cycles of life. Where there are valleys there are peaks as well. Ups and downs, joys and sorrows, pleasure and pain make the warp and woof of life. It is the sunshine and the cloudy days that make life interesting and worth living.

If prosperity harbours good fortune, great number of friends and comforts, adversity too, has its own uses in life. It is easy to stand on a pulpit to preach sermons on various virtues during the time of prosperity. But it is the storm of adverse times and circumstances that tests a person's real calibre and strength. Adversity acts like d furnace or a kiln which tests and tries gold to make it purer and better by separating dross from it. It is adversity that teaches us to be patient, courageous, firm and strong. It is only when we have to fight the circumstances that we turn to the best capacities and abilities in us- It is adversity that tests our will power and determination. It teaches us virtues of fortitude, forbearing, firmness, humanity and sympathy.

Adversity is the test of character. The weak and the infirm break into pieces and are grinded to powder in the mill of adversity. But the real men who have real strength of character emerge out even stronger, greater and firmer creations of God. We learn to suffer with dignity and forbearance so that we become noble and brave. Pursued and persuaded by adversity, we learn to fight and face the world alone without relying on fair-weather friends. Bacon, the father of English Essays said once, "The virtue of poverty is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in mortals is the more heroic virtue/' It is adversity that keeps the human in us alive. In days of hay and sunshine, we are apt to get lost in the glory and honour and grow indifferent to human feelings and sufferings. But when adversity strikes, we learn to be humble, sensitive and sympathetic.

Moreover, it is during adversity that a person's true nature is revealed. Adversity is a furnace that tries friendship as well. In a world where flickness and betrayal is common, where fortune vanishes and friends feign, it is during adversity that the sheep stands separated from the goats. Fair-weather friends disappear even at the sight of adversity whereas true friends stick through thick and thin. The essential baseness of human character is revealed during the times of adversity. It is very aptly said that "prosperity gains friends, adversity tries them". When we are blessed with wealth, honour, health, name and fame, we have infinite number of friends who claim to love us. live for us and even to die for us. But it is during hard times that the true nature of our friends is revealed. When the tough times strike us, then only we get to see the true and real faces of our friends, near and dear ones. Their sincerity and genuineness is revealed only when they stick through troubled time and have the courage to cry with us and stand with us during sorrow, poverty and loneliness. A true friend is the one who walks in when the world walks out.

Thus, it is only in times of adversity that the human soul transcends and rises above the mundane forms of life. It makes the soul sublime because prosperity easily brings in vice but it is adversity that discovers the virtue.