Resilience, the dictionary defines this word as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”. To me this is an invaluable quality to have on this crazy journey through life and not only will I prove its value, but I will show its necessity.
The importance of being resilient goes back to our youths. We exercised it from the time we scraped our knee from A fall, dusted ourselves off and kept moving forward. We developed it the first time we experienced an emotional hurt and decided to not allow it to have any formal dominance over our way of life. It is a quality that can redeem us at a moment’s notice, from our darkest hour and when faced by our biggest fears. Without resilience we allow ourselves to be crippled by fear. We will never put ourselves at risk to achieve that which will reap the greatest rewards. The absence of resilience, an unfathomable thought, makes us mere mortals against the winds of change. Battered by life’s obstacles we will choose to give in and accept everything that happens to us as the norm rather than the exception to the rule. It allows us to change what we can and administer the peace we need to accept the things we are unable to change.
if Resilience were ever to transform itself into a human being capable of having sustainable relationships I believe its best friend would be a person by the name of Hope. Ah, yes sweet, sweet hope, also known as the light at the end of the tunnel. Hope is what makes resilience a bearable experience. It gives us the foresight to know that our misery is temporary, our pain only slight in comparison to the bigger picture. The bigger picture of our lives, that point in which we look back and see where our resilience held us up just long enough to achieve our dreams.
In June of 2009 I found myself a victim of a global recession and probably the second greatest depression this country has experienced. I found myself unemployed and contemplating the meaning of my existence. My first instinct was to give up, to not allow my greatest misfortune turn into quite possibly my finest hour. I so desperately began to search my soul for that inner strength, “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune and change”. Shortly after that, resilience led me to my passion in life. A decision I put off for five years no longer seemed impossible, scary or even unattainable. If my resilient spirit had never comforted me and challenged me to take this chance, I would never be a student at the Art Institute or an aspiring writer and director, or even a great brother and son. History is riddled with examples of the importance of resilience. From our earliest ancestors defying whichever odds they encountered, to the emancipation of slaves, or to the nightmarish disasters in New Orleans and New York.
I attribute my views on resilience to a quote delivered by the late Senator Ted Kennedy at his brother Bobby’s funeral. In it he quoted his late brother Bobby as saying, “some men see things as they are and say ‘why’? I dream of things that never were and say ‘why not? ”. Without this ability to to adapt and and persevere due to resilience I would never be able to ask the question why not?”. Anything is possible with this ever so priceless quality, and our best friend Resilience.
