Delivering Resilience
Delivering Resilience instead of Happiness
My big brother is always saying stuff that perplexes me. In the throes of an exquisitely painful breakup, his comforting words were only, “Lisa, the gateway to joy is grief.”
It felt so illogical and unfair. The path to happy was to do happy things, right? Like retail therapy, or going out with friends. Taking up photography. Hugging a puppy. Something like that.
AND…. before doing happy I wanted my big brother to tell me that my ex-boyfriend had been cruel and beastly and was wholly to blame for this grisly breakup. But my brother was having none of it.
“The question isn’t why he was a jerk, Lisa.”
“It’s not??” I rebutted.
“No. The question is… why do you think it’s okay to date someone who doesn’t treat you well? Love can be painful, or love can be joyful. But love you will because love you are. You choose,” he stated.
I understood every word he said, but had no real experience of their meaning yet.
He continued anyway, “Life builds a reservoir of grief in each of us. Avoiding it never gets us to the other side. The reservoir just gets deeper. From time to time we must wade through that grief in order to find joy.”
It took me years to understand myself as both happy and sad at the same time. Not that I wanted to be happy when I was sad, or sad when I was happy. It took years for me to reshape point of view on happiness all together. To see my life as a constantly changing blend of both.
As Rehan and I were talking about what the festival and the Learning series was going to focus on, one theme came up repeatedly. Resilience.
I define resilience as how big a shock someone or something can recover from.
In life we are constantly getting shocks to our system, whether it’s a stressful day, or a terrible heartbreak. And in the case of some of this year’s speakers: trauma.
Many of us have been subjected to violence, disease, shame, or crippling fear. And each will stand on stage whole and healthy, and triumphing over their pasts.
These speakers are inspiring for their superhuman strength and courage. But what I admire more is that they embrace both their hope and doubt, courage and fear, joy and grief.
These people live deeply in their “and-ness.” I feel a thrill watching Giles Duley or Eddie Gavagan live passionately and eloquently after disaster — without sugarcoating the rawness of recovery. They honor the haunting uncertainty that marks their lives and with each move, they reveal a different path through a reservoir of grief that exists at the same time as their happiness.
On the day that Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace prize, Rehan asked me what Shiza Shahid, Malala’s mentor and women’s rights advocate, would speak about. Resilience, of course. Rehan paused, and said, “What if, in a weird way, what happened to Malala is the best thing that’s ever happened to her?”
“That could never be the case,” I said, “the best thing that’s ever happened to Malala is what she did next with that experience. She chooses to live through it, to journey through the reservoir each day to experience joy.”
