I’ve recently been rereading The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson and realized that the book contained a great metaphor for how to overcome the lowest points of your life. The whole series, The Stormlight Archive, is a phenomenal read, and that’s coming from a guy who doesn’t particularly read fiction. I highly recommend it.
If you’ve already read The Way of Kings, bear with me as I explain the context for those who are missing out. Spoiler alert for those who haven’t read this part yet. I gave you a fair warning.
One of the main characters, Kaladin, basically lost everything and was made a slave. Betrayed by a leader he trusted, his men are slaughtered and he is branded and sold to another army to be a bridgeman, an occupation that is as grueling as it gets.
You see, there is a war being fought on the Shattered Plains, which is basically a barren landscape known for its vast plateaus that stand divided by one another by deep chasms, (think about mud when it dries and it cracks into a bunch of little flat chunks but way bigger), hence the name. And one of the highprinces decides that the best way to get across these chasms is to have a bunch of slaves carry heavy wooden bridges for miles and those slaves serve a secondary purpose of being disposable arrow targets for their enemies.
Like I said, its a hopeless occupation with a 100% death rate. No workers comp, no hazard pay, no time off and no HR. Not the type of job any sensible person would apply for, and you don’t get to resign because they didn’t give you the right sized running shoes. You get sandles, a vest, crappy food and zero hope. It’s a fate that crushes your soul and gives no thanks when you die.
Its no wonder that Kaladin, who was once a respected soldier before he was brutally betrayed by the previous highprince he worked for, thought about suicide, and the method he chose was to try out for the chasm diving team.
Somehow Kaladin didn’t take the plunge. The chasms were his way out, but not by dying in them. Long story short, Kaladin decides to persevere and keeps his heart in the fight even when everything around him screams to give up. He befriends and trains his men into the best bridge team the Shattered Plains has ever seen, and a spark of hope is lit in each man. Unfortunately, they get too smart for their own good and cause their highprince a severe loss in battle because of the tactics Kaladin schemed up to keep them alive.
The punishment is brutal. Kaladin barely survives. And part of that punishment is chasm duty, where bridge teams salvage supplies from the rotting corpses of unfortunate soldiers and bridgemen who lost their lives falling into chasms during battle.
Not only are chasms a falling hazard, but they are also the homes of enormous monsters called chasmfiends. They look like spiders and lobsters had a building-sized baby and those monsters love nothing more than a human dinner and they always run out on the check. And to top it all off, the whole world is subject to the torment of roaming hurricanes called highstorms that destroy most everything in their path, and the worst place to be in one of those is, you guessed it, a chasm.
But it’s in the chasm that Kaladin teaches the bridgemen to be warriors. It’s the place that they truly became a team and where they learned to lean on one another and take back hope for survival. Ultimately, that training gave the bridgemen what it took to save another highprince named Dalinar from the betrayal of their current master, and Dalinar recognized a good thing when it saved his ass so, he trades something nations fight over to bring that bridge team to his army.
Dalinar gave them a high position as the king’s guard, and slaves who started as hopeless bridgmen became some of the most trusted warriors in the kingdom.
I had to explain all of that to say that sometimes we find ourselves like Kaladin. Our lives are controlled by metaphorical chasms and we lose ourselves in hopelessness and we nearly let that chasm take our lives. We stare into the darkness of the chasm and there appears no escape.
Maybe you’re on your last straw and then something else bad happens and you don’t understand why you have to suffer so much. You lose that job or that relationship. Maybe you messed up badly and you don’t know how to make things right. Bad things just keep happening to you and you were already not having a good time. Maybe you were like Kaladin, thinking about taking that last step over the edge. Think back to when you hit the lowest point in your life and that’s your chasm.
We have to persevere. We have to take refuge in the Virtue of Perseverance and the Virtue of Courage and use that chasm as a training ground. We embrace it. We forge a better person inside of its depths, and eventually the chasm can no longer contain the person we become.
That’s what our noble character Kaladin did. He kept on chugging when all the signs told him to accept defeat. Instead of letting the chasm be defined as his doom, Kaladin used the chasm as a refuge to train his men and explore his newfound magical powers. Soon enough he outgrew the chasm. It didn’t defeat him, instead it served as a vehicle for his growth. Kaladin found a purpose for his suffering and that changed everything.
The chasm can either be a defining moment in that it broke us and left us defeated, or it can define us by showing what we are capable of overcoming. If you’re in a chasm, take heart and persevere. Don’t lose hope. One man’s despair is another man’s training ground.
Will you be defined by your difficulties as someone who was broken by them, or as someone who came out of the depths as a better person? Can you persevere, or will you take the easy way out and give up?
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