Bashing the Cliche: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

"What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger"

Really? Or perhaps it just makes you tired?

Tell me you've seen it—boldly printed on everything from gym walls to motivational memes—the line that’s supposed to comfort us when life hits a rough patch: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It’s been around for so long, we’ve stopped questioning it. But today, let’s question it, shall we?

Honestly, if everything that didn’t kill us made us stronger, wouldn't we all be superheroes by now? Most of us are just trying to make it through another Monday without needing an extra coffee (or three).

Take the professional world, for example. After being on the edge of a layoff for the fifth time in your career, are you really stronger—or just better at pretending you’re okay with uncertainty while secretly Googling “career switch to chicken farming”? That corporate resilience everyone talks about feels more like a survival instinct at this point, right?

How about the gym: the place where they take “What doesn’t kill you” a bit too literally. Sure, you thought lifting that extra weight would make you stronger... until your back decided to teach you otherwise. So now you’re not stronger—you’re just a little more familiar with your orthopedist's number than you'd like to be.

Then there’s the personal side of things. Like that breakup. We’ve all been there—wallowing in the idea that we’re going to come out the other side of heartache as some kind of enlightened, emotionally armored warrior. Spoiler alert: more often than not, it just turns into a three-month stint on awkward dating apps, and a newfound dislike of small talk over overpriced coffee.

What about the daily commute? You'd think that after years of sitting in traffic jams, you’d emerge with the patience of a Zen monk. But no, what doesn’t kill you—like that bumper-to-bumper grind—just makes you more likely to mutter choice words under your breath at the guy who cut you off. Strength? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a new kind of exhaustion.

But here’s the kicker: What if life isn’t about coming out of every struggle with a new superpower? Maybe, just maybe, we can admit that sometimes the goal is to simply survive the tough stuff with our sanity intact. Strength doesn’t always mean emerging with chiselled abs or a fortified spirit. Sometimes, it looks like making it through without throwing your phone at the wall during another pointless Zoom meeting.

So, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t always make you stronger. Sometimes, it just gives you a good reason to take a nap. Or a vacation. Or an extra slice of cake. And that, my friends, is a strength in itself.

Real strength isn’t about never getting knocked down. It’s about knowing that when life gives you chaos, you don’t always have to turn it into a life lesson. Sometimes, you can just laugh, shrug, and move on. And maybe that’s the strongest thing of all.

-- Pradeep K (Prady)