Resilience
“I mean
only to say this: that sometimes through good luck or bad, through
curses or fate, the world cracks itself open, and afterward, nothing
will ever be the same.”
Jennifer
E. Smith (Windfall)
Sometimes things happen
in our lives that utterly change the equation—sometimes they are
“good” things, and sometimes, “bad” things. It may be the
announcement that a baby is on the way, or that a marriage is ending,
or that you've inherited a large sum of money, or won the lottery. It
may be a freak accident or a diagnosis, or the dawning awareness of a
stunning betrayal, or falling in love. Human life carries every sort
of experience and most of us are initially kicked in the gut by any major
change—especially when it comes out of the blue. We may find
ourselves moving through the stages of grief even when whatever
happened is, in the eyes of the world, good fortune. I remember
experiencing this when I became pregnant with my first child—I knew
my life would be forever changed, and even though I wanted a baby, I
was terrified. I wonder if you can relate.
The thing that makes
human beings so successful at survival on planet earth, is our
ability to adapt to changing conditions. Not all of us, but enough of
us are sufficiently resilient to ensure the survival of our species.
I just read The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. It is a story
about a young girl, Liesel Meminger, in Germany during the second
world war. Over the course of the book, she loses just about everyone
she cares about, all by the age of fourteen. But there is enough
sweetness in her life, enough love and compassion, to give her a
glimmer of what is possible. I think life is like that for many of us
on a less global scale. We all experience circumstances that drop us
to our knees, but there is within that a balance of love and
goodness, and somehow, we survive. We come away scarred, and yet, we
learn how, if not to forget, at least to move-on. It is when we don't
make it through the stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, and acceptance), and therefore fail to move-on, that we
are crushed by life's circumstances.
A young 20-year-old man
won a 400-million dollar lottery last week. I wonder how he is
coping. Will he be resilient enough to absorb such a large windfall
without breaking under its weight? His world has cracked itself open
and will never be the same again. I hope he is strong, and wise, and
adaptable.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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