Mate, your second paragraph is essentially reframing trauma. It's true that trauma can prepare one to face a bigger challenge later in life, but not always, and

Mate, your second paragraph is essentially reframing trauma. It's true that trauma can prepare one to face a bigger challenge later in life, but not always, and it can make facing other kinds of challenges more difficult and incentivize withdrawing from a number of wonderful parts of life. There have been successful societies built around early trauma (Spartans, etc.) but we remember many of them as brutal by necessity of their surrounding environment. Agree with the rest entirely.