A crucible is:
a severe test; a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development (Merriam-Webster dictionary)
And a Crucible of Greatness is a ‘take-no-prisoners’ place that catalyzes you to take action in the direction of something not yet formed, trusted or believed. A place wherein all of your survival instincts are telling you to run, escape, hide, distract. When the fight or flight dial is switched up to maximum and you are thrashing about, wanting the new reality hidden within ‘the terrible Gift’ to somehow go away.
It’s a recognition that there is no journey and certainly no growth without the adversity that forces you to question your current beliefs, behaviours and parameters. A necessary place of radical self-confrontation.
The Crucible of Greatness asks you to drink deeply of the full measure of the crisis, and precisely in so moving through, discovering, reclaiming and forging qualities from within yourself that were not there before (though perhaps glimpsed in the flickering light of your ever-becoming).
Someone other than the person you were before the crisis emerges, transformed, renewed. Clearer, and with a diamond in your hand.
A door opens that could not possibly have opened before.