Resilience: The Emotional Multi-Tool
Who would have know how important resilience (defined as the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions) would be to human race in this moment. As we are confronted by disease, ineffectual leadership, and broken systems, we as people will need to dig deep for ourselves, our families and our communities, and find resilience. It is something we have and something we can learn all at the same time. It is something we know and something we need to teach and encourage because it is hard work. In many ways I feel like we have been preparing for this moment for a long time, because that is how resilience works. You practice it on the small stuff, like disappointment, so you know how to use it for the big stuff, like loss and fear. I have been hearing the call for some time now. It is almost as if the collective consciousness has been screaming, “You need to know how to ride the waves, not just calm the waters.” I would much prefer to calm the water, make everyone happy, and get out quick. But for a good chunk of my career the universe has made it clear that resilience is the lesson I need to learn and teach. For the last ten years I have been through putting this message to the parents I work with, “Your job is to give your child hiking boots and teach them how to hike the biggest mountain, it is not, I repeat not, to flatten every little hill so that their path is effortless.” The effort builds the skills, so that next time they know how, even if last time they felt unprepared. When there is not a particular skill to learn, then the effort helps them build some protective callouses on their tender skin. Last we can give them the knowledge that when skills and callouses can’t help, there is also tomorrow, that place where “This right now” is different and has passed.
The collective has been working on this and talking about this for all the ages, but in the past ten years my immediate collective has been doubling it efforts to teach the world this important lesson. The wise people of our time have worked so hard to teach us that we are strong, brave, and resilient, and that highlighting our fortitude not our weakness is what will get us through to the other side. The critics of this would say, “but it should not have to be this hard. It should be changed so that it doesn’t have to be this hard.” Yes, this is true! Injustice should be righted. People should be seen, heard, know, and honored. When we are not, it is painful and unjust. We should work hard to make it better, but it will never be easy. So while we are righting the wrongs we have to know what there will always be battles that will take great effort to overcome. Some of them are created by other humans, some are a creation of nature, and some we create in ourselves. Resilience is the one true tool that will help us get through it all.
This global pandemic is painful in ways that none of us expected and none of us can control. Although our efforts may flatten the curve, we will still have to climb a mountain. As a collective and as individuals we will have to dig down deep into our reserves and meet this challenge with creativity, fortitude, and resilience. The humans may be able to contain this virus eventually, but we will never eliminate the unknown. Unexpected events will still befall us, and were our readiness lies is in our resilience not in our ability make it all easy to swallow. So let us remember what the collective has always know. Resilience is the emotional multi tool we can teach our children and ourselves.