Personal Narrative: My Experience With Adversity

Lessons can be learned from the littlest of experiences. Important life lessons can be taken from not only success, but also our greatest failures. Adversity can greatly alter our perspective and provide an individual with wisdom. The first time I was faced with adversity was when I broke my tibia and fibula. I was involved in sports and this was definitely a setback, to say the least. Moments after the accident, I realized that the months of recovery I would have to toil. I realized these future and upcoming months would require patience and I would undergo great amounts of drudgery.

I had to wear my cast for what seemed an elongated time. I could not take my cast off until my bones were fully healed from the surgery. This took about a total

of three months, which did not seem long until I learned it would take an additional three months of physical therapy to assure that my bones were capable of performing at my former level. In approximately six months I had to endure long sessions of exercises just to get back to where I was. In this time span I could have made great strides of improving instead of settling to an average level.
However, I did not let this incident prevent me from participating in sports. I was still working daily on myself. I knew that if I wanted to participate in sports, with confidence, this would be a very important step for me. I had to experience what it was like to sit on the sidelines of practice for the beginning of football. This was very hard for me and I admit, I did get a little emotional. However, this incident did not affect my optimistic outlook on life. I was still involved and going about in my usual way, but I was affected in a positive way. I learned what it was like for something to happen to me that was not exactly my fault. Sometimes in life, events happen that could really change somebody’s life. This being a smaller situation in terms of impact, I did not let this get to my head too much. In my opinion, there is nothing we can do about what happens to us, yet I believe we can control how we react to it.