The Resilience Game
This is an idea excessively reinforced in personal development blogs, publications and in my (already not so much) immediate social circle that in order to be successful and have it all in life, you need to stay positive no matter what, turn your failures into learnings and get over them — in a word, be resilient. And brace yourself if you are not.
Well, after being acknowledged for my resilience by the company I was working at the time back in March 2018, I was kinda flattered, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop wondering what do people actually mean when they talk about resilience and what if we’re getting it a little wrong?
I’ve never considered myself a resilient person. If anything, I’ve always been prone to anxieties and imagining any kind of problematic situation unfolding in the worst possible way. I’ve always called it being realistic though, but in London they explained to me that it’s called negative thinking. Anyhow, this mindset, call it realistic or negative, has been my buddy since I started turning into a young adult (that is when I first faced real life) and that has been a while, so changing it every time I need to requires a tremendous effort.
At some point, as if to teach me a lesson — or lift me out of this misery, depending on how you look at it (that’s part of the “resilience” drill, isn’t it?), — life started providing me with an abundance of situations which were challenging enough for me to dramatise it a little, following in Hamlet’s footsteps and asking myself “to be or not to be?”
My world lost the axis it had been revolving around for years and turned upside down, so I started building my resilience by having a complete melt-down and turning into a total wreck.
Then, because I am not only both emotional and impulsive, but also somewhat intellectually advanced (kudos to everyone who filled in “challenged” in their heads while reading the line), I did my bit of crying and screaming and after that, still in a semi-dazed condition of emotional spin-down, I let instincts act to keep me afloat.
While living in an “alien”, as my mother would put it, society in London, I reached out for support to people I could trust. Not even for advice, but just for listening to me, drinking with me and making me clubbing from time to time. I needed to identify those I could trust purely relying on my gut feeling as there was no time and space to analyse. And yes, I then did the unthinkable, breaking half of the rules of British society because the stakes for me were so high: I would literally tell them what was happening and ask them for help. Being British, they would first be baffled by the “personal information” bomb I would drop on them in a small talk over lunch (non-alcoholic hence more impactful) or over pub drinks (alcoholic hence less shocking and easier to process).
When they stepped in (or rather, when I drew them in, leaving them no choice but to be my friends), I finally started to feel my resilience growing. And it was a sign of life not being great for me at all. And even though it is fair to say that life is a sequence of struggles which you win or lose or don’t even get into, and this is what defines who you are, it becomes an issue when you have no breathing space at all between your battles and — more importantly — you have no army to fight by your side.
As flattering as it is, I don’t believe I’m truly resilient as I don’t see myself adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy or threats that I’m facing as long as I don’t have people who would step in and break my fall. I also think that this is a big myth that there are people out there who do not break in the face of challenges and serious trials but approach them exclusively with cool head and growth mindset — and alone.
Even Batman had Robin.
I believe that how resilient you are is defined by your support structure. In this individualistic western society of people who are giving up social ties because the latter are increasingly perceived as dependencies and burdens, your resilience is only as good as people standing by your side. They can do all sorts of things: make you laugh, get you drunk, get you laid, get you annoyed, get you frustrated, make you angry, get you inspired, sometimes just get you a cup of tea. They do the one and only thing that matters — make you feel alive again.
Because in this life, you don’t always get to pick your battles. But you always get to pick your army.
