Becoming Tough, Not Hard

“There is an important concept here: patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can—working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf). To endure literally means to harden in the original Latin. In materials sciences, there is an important difference between hardness and toughness. Hardness is resistance to deformation whereas toughness is a measure of a material's ability to absorb stress without breaking. Toughness is a combination of strength, which is the total amount of stress and strain an object can endure, and ductility, which is how an object's ability to lose its original shape without breaking. We would all like to be as hard as diamonds and never get scratched or dented or bent out of shape, but a diamond will shatter if hit by the right amount of force at the right angle. We can't prepare for every eventuality. Life is going to throw stuff at us that will knock us flat. But if, as Elder Uchtdorf said, we do not merely endure, but endure well, then we may not come through a trial unscathed, but we can make it through in one piece. Instead of merely becoming hard, we should become tough. It's ok to bend and scratch if we hold true to our core, to what matters most.