Tough Skin

A tougher skin. Is this an asset of the maturing process, or what emerges from its casualties? Is a lack of tough skin a liability, or a rare thing to be protected and preserved?

Someone who lacks toughness, as in, such as a teacher or parent who won't be firm in disciplining children, ought to make one gag. That kind of un-toughness is not an indication of character or the matured disposition of the heart.

Someone who is too sensitive to life's blows, who is blown off course by the winds of disappointment or change, ought to use that time as a lesson in resilience. One who has gone through tragedy, however, and comes out without a jaded, hardened heart: this is a good thing.

Having a porous skin is something to aim for. A skin that selectively permits some level of chaos and hardship without melting down and losing one's own reserve of strength, like a cell phone too quickly drained of battery, but also a skin that remains sensitive to wrong and hurt in a way that exhibits the capacity for compassion, the ability to feel and empathize with others' pain. How can one remain compassionate if the skin is tough to the point that it excuses injustice or a lesser-version of how God intended it to be, in a kind of resigned acceptance?

No, a porous skin that remains sensitive to injustice, and refuses to give up that first dream for an inpenetrable faith, hope, and love, a skin that can exhibit both mercy and passion because it knows its own resilient reserves of love and strength: that is the aim.