Resilience Quote by Bern Williams

“Peaks and valleys” is the kind of ready-made metaphor that usually signals greeting-card wisdom, but Bern Williams sharpens it with one surprisingly modern tweak: scale. Everyone expects fluctuation; the real threat is magnification. By invoking the Grand Canyon, the line reframes hardship less as fate and more as an engineering problem - erosion over time, a small cut that turns catastrophic through neglect, repetition, and exposure.

The intent isn’t to deny suffering or chase permanent “peak” living. It’s a quiet pitch for maintenance: habits, support systems, and early interventions that keep ordinary lows from metastasizing into identity-defining collapses. “Supposed to be” carries a subtle permission slip, pushing back against the contemporary pressure to optimize happiness as a full-time job. Bad weeks aren’t evidence of failure; they’re part of the terrain.

The subtext is about agency without the brittle, bootstrappy fantasy of total control. You can’t flatten a landscape, but you can build guardrails, reroute traffic, call for help before the drop becomes unbridgeable. It’s also a deft nod to mental health without naming it: depression, burnout, grief - states that can deepen when left untreated, when shame keeps them private, when coping turns into avoidance.

Contextually, the quote fits a self-help era that’s grown suspicious of “positive vibes only.” It’s pragmatic optimism: not “stay high,” but “don’t let the low become your geology.”