Peace and adversity are not opposites. We need trials to strengthen us. Idleness does not grow us any muscles but makes us weak. Everyone has troubles to overcome, whether they are financial, emotional, physical, or other, and every kind of privation or struggle is a kind of adversity. But all these things can happen in peacetime. Peace does not mean freedom from struggle.
It is rare but possible to lead a completely protected life, but that is a kind of adversity in itself because it separates you from reality and leaves you unprepared for the inevitable sickness and death. Shakyamuni Buddha was completely isolated from the unpleasant realities of life by order of his father the king, and he chose to leave the shelter of his father’s palace to see what the world was really like. He said that life is suffering because there is always something we long for and cannot have or have but fear to lose, and those feelings trouble every one of us.