Last weekend, I read the Scotsman, Ian Robertson's recently published book, The Stress Test: How Pressure can make you Stronger and Smarter.
I enjoyed this book over several delicious hot chocolate CUPPSOs.
This book covers real-life accounts of how different people dealt with unexpectedly stressful events.
What the author wanted to know was:
Why do some people show great resilience in the face of traumatic, often life changing events, whilst others struggle to cope with smaller ordinary events?
The author stumbled on (a part of) the answer in a conversation of all things about ... grass! He describes this under the wonderfully titled "The Grass and the Greenhouse" - a lovely name don't you think?
Some grass species survive in the toughest of natural environments such as the Russian steppes, where gale force winds batter their stems flat for days on end.
This wasn't the remarkable part though.
What Robertson found most telling was that, when the exact same grass was grown in the sheltered environment of a greenhouse, then:
"... planted out in the open,
the first gust of wind (would)
...snap and kill it."
The author concludes (my words here) that one can get too much of a good thing. In other words too much of the happy, easy life can have a detrimental effect on some people.
This is because such people never had to develop resilience or adaptability.... which reminds me of a saying I heard long ago:
True friendship is like a teabag in a cuppa CUPPSO. The hotter the water the stronger they get!
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