'Be strong.' 'Stay strong.' 'You are stronger than you know.' To scroll through Facebook is to meet such exhortations constantly.
They will often form the basis for a self-help meme, a mode of expression which is ubiquitous on social media: a nature photograph, typically, with the chosen motto printed over it in an appropriately friendly font, put together by somebody, somewhere, and shared, and shared again around the world.
Some seem circular, and strangely unhelpful. 'You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.'
Some, at a time of rising concern about violence against women, are downright alarming. 'A strong woman is one who is able to smile this morning like she wasn’t crying last night.'
Some are the stuff of fascistic nightmares. 'The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.'
Oh, and let us not forget poor Nietzsche’s repulsive, and ever popular, 'That which does not destroy us makes us strong.' (Well, that’s all right, then.)
But the one I find most comically fascinating is this: 'People cry, not because they’re weak, but because they’ve been strong for too long.' (Like many gems of wisdom on the internet, it is often attributed to Johnny Depp, who must find his unsolicited status as a teacher of wisdom, interchangeable with the Buddha, Oscar Wilde and John Lennon, quite bewildering.) The meme is, I think, a highly revealing example of the genre, because of the way it turns itself upside down to defend the one weeping from a slander it seems to assume would be a slander indeed. For after all, if the person crying actually were weak, instead of a strong person in disguise, well, that really would be despicable.
I can only imagine that many people find these mantras about strength encouraging, perhaps even life-saving. Perhaps most people identify as 'strong' and enjoy being reminded of it. Perhaps such words are often said, or shared, with little reflection, simply to offer the comfort most ready to hand, by asserting the most fashionable virtue.
But I find them terrifying.
Why? Because I cannot deafen myself to the implied threat I hear within them. It seems to me that they are really saying, 'Be strong… or else.'
'Be strong… because if you are not strong you are weak, and our society has contempt for the weak.'
'Be strong… because if you are weak you will not be acceptable… you will