resilience revisited

When I was an adolescent, I had a system for organizing my closet.  Skirts together, shirts together, sweaters together.  I would start at the left each day and pull a skirt from the line and then match it up with one of my blouse options and then a sweater, starting the quest for each with the furthest to the left on the rod.  My mother once asked me what would happen if my system didn’t work.  My answer was that I’d invent a new system.  Even at a young age I was practicing resilience.

That shouldn’t be shocking.  One thing often said about children in general is that they are resilient.  They can handle less than ideal situations, often with more aplomb than adults.  (Maybe that is one of the things about children that Jesus wanted his disciples to emulate.)  However, a friend who had been a social worker once told me that in sociology there’s a premise that 25% of children who are in turbulent or traumatic situations will come out thriving no matter what you do.  25% will not thrive in spite of every intervention.  But for 50% how you intervene in their situations makes a huge difference in their ability to thrive later. 

As adults we’ve probably used some conscious or subconscious methods for developing resilience.  But we might just as subconsciously stifle resilience when we get more focused on what we lack, than on new ideas and creative options.  As we age, we find ourselves on a trajectory where we lose flexibility, we lose friends, we lose life.  As loss piles upon loss and lack piles upon lack, what is our attitude?  Do we stew in our own juices or do we think, “How do I make lemonade out of this lemon of a situation?”

How have I found the blessing in COVID-time?  Don’t get me wrong, even an optimist like me gets weighed down by periods of sadness at the state of my life or others’ lives or the state of the world.  I’ve been envious of friends who are going places with a sense of invulnerability that I do not have.  Whatever God-given resilience I possess still requires effort to cultivate.  I tend to my innate resilience by applying creativity.  What have I been waiting to tackle, wanting to accomplish, that requires time and energy that I’ve not previously possessed?

I thought I would share some of my quarantine activities:

1. I love to swim and have a pool that I’ve never used enough.  Beginning in May I went slowly from 20 to 140 laps a day.  Since August I’ve settled into 60-90 laps a day as a good goal for myself.
2. Filming short poetry readings (less than 60 seconds) and posting them on Instagram with the handle “Poems4quarantine”. Between April and September, I posted over 140.
3. I’ve had a stash of books in my bedside table that I never get to.  I started plowing through them and have read 20+ books since May.
4. Purging my clothes closet of things that I never wear.
5. Gathering with three to five friends from church for Zoom noontime prayer Monday through Friday.
6. A weekly social distance lunch/book discussion with a group of four to six women. We bring our own lunch to my backyard and sit six feet apart.
7. A daily non-contact walk with my youngest grandson. (Someone puts him in his stroller and takes him out after our return.)
8. Nightly reading of the Order of Compline from the Book of Common Prayer with my husband.

I didn’t start doing all these things all at once.  But by establishing one new regimen, I found it so satisfying, loved the feeling of accomplishment so much, that I wanted to add another discipline.  For, as one of my dear friends has always said, “Work is a good thing.”  The more you find something meaningful to do, the more empowered and encouraged you are. 

May you find one thing to do during this time that nourishes your soul.  And then another.  And then another.  Perhaps soon you will have a list as lengthy as mine.

Love, Liz

Cartoon by Harry Bliss