When you subject the mind to highly stressful situations, with the sole purpose of understanding its nature and reinforcing a belief that you can make it through hell or high water no matter what, you train the mind to handle stress, fatigue, and a kind of brokenness from a vantage point of empowerment.
These experiences create a thicker skin, a kind of impenetrable armor you can carry with you — not just in battle, but through life.
These are the lessons that endurance teaches us, if we let it. This is why the person who gives more when it hurts gets more when it is over. Because the more we can trust ourselves in the worst of times to pull through, the greater our faith in our own abilities, and the greater our resolve and self-worth.
We create a new identity, more resilient to outside influence, allowing us to uncover a path to peace on the inside. And the light shines, even in darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.