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Some of you might be familiar with an experiment that took place in Arizona in the late 1980s.

Creating a biosphere, a closed structure to then look at how living systems could interact

in a closed structure.

This was for the sake of space colonization.

And the experiment only lasted a few years and it had trouble for a number of reasons.

One of the main reasons was that there weren't winds that blew through it.

So the trees couldn't grow.

And what scientists discovered is that trees need wind for the heartwood to be strong enough

for trees to grow.

And I've always loved thinking about that since I've heard about it because it's so relevant

to what we need in our own lives to develop strength.

That clearly hurricane force winds will uproot us.

But we need a certain amount of challenge or stress to develop our strength, to develop

our inner resources.

I often think about butterflies.

The butterflies, their wings are not going to be strong enough to really fly until they

have that struggle against to break through the cocoon.

So it is that when we have struggle, when we have stressors, and I spoke about this

in the last class, our reflex is to think that something's wrong, that this is a problem.

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