CHRISTOPHER SIMON
What does it mean to be strong?
Strength is resilience, more than just performing once, it's getting back up and recovering. Strength is persistence, recovery, and resilience. It doesn't matter if you can perform once, twice, or three times. The question is if you hit adversity and if you're not able to comeback from it, you're not really strong you're not reliable, you're weak.
In what ways do you wish you could be stronger?
I wish I could be stronger in resisting my own internal temptations in that not wanting and not hoping. It's wanting and hoping that leads me to make decisions that I end up regretting. If I could not want and not hope I would be a lot stronger. Hope is a motherfucker and it will kill you every time.
Where do you think your strengths lie?
It lies in persistence and ingenuity in ways that I can figure things out and I will make it happen. If there is a goal and I want that goal I real really want that goal I can make it happen.
How do you find strength?
I can't speak for others, but for me, I find strength entirely in others. Whether it's in service or in spite, every major accomplishment in my life has come about due to someone else: wanting to protect someone else, provide for someone else, prove someone wrong, prove someone else right. There is so much -- so much -- that I can't do for myself, but that I can do with surprising ease for someone I love.
How do you give people strength?
I wish I had a pat answer for this. I'd like to think it's via reliability: always being there, the other person knowing that they can count on you no matter what. But I know that's not always the answer. Different people need different things in different situations. Your reliability might count for nothing when they need something else from you, something that you find it difficult or impossible to provide. I guess the cop-out answer would be you give people strength by giving them what they need when they need it, but it's never that simple, is it?