4. "Resilience" is a verb

No one can be resilient alone, in all contexts, at all times.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash

Last year, I published a book about resilience, specifically about how mainstream ideas about resilience are grounded in conservative mythologies and ways of thinking. In our cultural imagination, people either are resilient or aren’t. We either learn to be resilient or we don’t. Life is war. We are strong or weak. Resilience, we are constantly being reminded, is all in our minds: mental toughness, nebulous “strength,” optimism, having the right attitude to hardship.

We are mainly taught to turn inward to find our resilience. Look at any list of “how to” and you will find 90% of them mirror these beliefs, and the other 10% might mention community, friends, and collective good. This is all backwards. No one can “be resilient” alone, in all contexts, at all times. No on can undo political injustices, historic wrongs, and enduring legacies by themselves.

We also learn to think of resilience as a series of nouns - a trait, a skill, or a mindset that we, as individuals have or are supposed to acquire as individuals. We are, however, always resiliencing in our fully embodied way of being, in the lifelong processes of interdependence and mutual care that enable us to weather stress and hardship.

The risks we face today — from economic inequality, authoritarianism, climate irresponsibility and reckless technologies to the enduring realties of genocide, slavery, and colonialism — are complex, global, and mutually reinforcing. All, however, share a quality: they depend on keeping people separate and disconnected from one another and the world. On radical and isolating individualism and survival of the fittest, power-over-others reasoning. The self-sufficiency, strength, mental toughness, and positivity making up our mainstream resilience do the same: they are built around the belief that you cannot trust or rely on anyone else, certainly not your society, to nurture and care for you.

It can be hard to appreciate how much our cultural script for resilience is part of the same systems and worldviews that require us to be so resilient to begin with.

This topic is on the brain for so many of us and I have been revisiting some of the ideas from that book in today’s context. Writing from scratch is a challenge this week, so, in case of use, I thought I’d share this short excerpt from the book.

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What does it take, in the words of poet Georgina Herrera, to adapt in the belief in “the fleetingness of the terrible, and the permanence of the kind.” Our hearts can be both aching and full. Life is fluid, change is constant, we adapt. We are built to know terrible pain and yet hold visions of future pleasure and joy.

The nature and the quality of our prevailing matters and we have to grow comfortable with new societies and radically different futures. Visionary hope and inventive dreams are important because, at the most individual level, no one wants to lose their people, memories, or homes. I also, selfishly, don’t want to lose the person I am in relation to them. I want my children, you, and others to have the same assurances. We have to find ways to do everything over.

So, what can will do in chaos and crisis?

As metaphors, ecologies, and societies in stress and flux—island places show us how to pull apart mainstream resilience thinking and reassemble ourselves in innovative and caring ways. Islands are about isolated land, but they are also as much about the water that defines and redefines them every day. We can think the same about ourselves, less as the stuff of land and more as the stuff of water.

When “the world” changes, we change, whether we chose to or not.

We know, too, that Earth is an island, not unlike the one I grew up on. Limited space, diverse people, our fortunes entwined. None of us can afford a resilience that entrenches beliefs and ideals drawn from seventeenth-century dualism, eighteenth-century subjectivities, nineteenth-century masculine ideals, and twentieth century capitalist values. Being resilient in revolutionary ways won’t happen if we stay so attached to outdated and deeply corrupt ideals and beliefs.

We share histories, are related to one another, bounded and mutually dependent. Thinking relationally and prioritizing mutual care have to direct our political lives and reshape our economies. We can educate children in ways that cultivate a society that shares resources, meets basic needs, and embraces dignity as communal values. It is kindness to ensure that children are safe and fed; to treat all people with dignity, not to reward labor but because they are our neighbors. It is kindness to be patient, to listen to people, and to allow others to bask in what and whom they love. It’s also kindness to share what we have, to keep our water clean, to not poison the earth, and to recognize the impacts of our actions on the delicate balance of nature. It is kindness to ensure that the world of the future isn’t an unmitigated hellscape. As a rule, the potency of day-to-day kindness far surpasses that of the world’s most formidable weapons.

Speaking for myself, when I encounter stress and hardship I become a magpie. In difficult and anxious moments, I use many of the resilience techniques and skills that we are taught might be effective, but with caution and moderation. I try to be optimistic and grateful for what I have. I work hard and persist in endeavors that are important to me. Whenever possible, I encourage my children to do the same. But none of these habits is what enables me to adapt, feel safe, find peace, and move forward each day.

What does help is knowing that I am nurtured by my family and community. What matters is that there are people I trust and who trust me. What makes a difference are the many ways that I can rely on being the beneficiary of material privileges and psychological comforts conferred by my society. These relationships, connections, and political realities are essential to any individual strength I try to cultivate.

So, I try my best to love and accept others and help create a world where kindness is the rule instead of the exception. I often fail and grow weary; I make mistakes, feel ashamed, doubt myself, and fall back on habits of mind and comfort, feeling inept at the task. I take what I have for granted. I make mistakes. Act politically with too much caution. But I persevere in my belief in care, connection, and mutual meaning-making as essential to respecting material life and our shared well-being. I stand in grateful wonder at the world and its fierce beauties.

In spectacular arrogance, our mainstream vision of resilience encourages us to ignore, minimize, and even punish the desire for our greatest resilience assets: interdependence, collective versatility, and shared care. Instead of revealing our relationships to one another, our environments, and the systems we live in, this vision highlights and glorifies self-sufficiency, limitless positivity, and individual strength against all odds. It makes us less resilient, not more

I believe, instead, that resilience is found in the small braveries of the day, the things said out loud, the refusals we make to build a better way of living in peace and in more just societies. It is the exercise of love, compassion, and care as our responsibility to one another. It is what we make of it together.