Resilience
“Should
you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of
their carving.”
Elizabeth
Kubler Ross
A
decade or so ago, a local photographer named Melissa Springer did a photo
exhibition of women who had undergone radical mastectomies. I remember going to
see it and marveling at how beautiful they were—the women and the photos.
Losing their breasts had changed the way they looked, of course, but, in some
ways, it had strengthened them—at least, it had made them confident enough to
pose for a photographer. What they embodied was resilience.
When
life changes abruptly, we are confronted both with challenges and with
opportunities and it’s up to us to choose which it will be. If you’re anything
like me, you hide in your cave and lick your wounds while you think grumpy “why-me”
thoughts, but then you go, “What the heck, let’s do this!” Resilience is all
about adapting well to adversity. Its goal is not only to survive, but to thrive.
It is human
nature to try to shelter ourselves and our loved ones from unhappy surprises of
any sort. We don’t like pain, and if we did, we’d be sickly neurotic. But life
has a way of serving up an abundant dose of unexpected change if we live long
enough, and when we shelter ourselves or others from the experience of coping
with such challenges, we reduce our/their resilience. Right now, with the
pandemic going into its third year, the people who have been most sheltered are
learning the limits of their resiliency.
The definition
of resilient is being able to overcome unexpected change. I think of this country
during World War II, when everything changed overnight with the bombing of
Pearl Harbor. The war effort required radical change. Women went to work in
factories, became mechanics, and shouldered many jobs only men had before. And
when the war ended, everything changed again. It was a challenging time, but
the country was resilient enough to endure and pull together on both occasions.
A
country is only as resilient as its people. We must realize that it is our
choice—individually and collectively—as to whether we see today's challenges as unfair burdens
or opportunities. Every day, we are confronted with unexpected events, and with
changes we did not choose. Life is unpredictable. The question is, how
resilient are we? Will we rise to the challenge? We know we can because we’ve
done it before. But it’s our choice as to whether we just survive or truly
thrive.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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