September 4th, 2020

Never Backwards, but Not Necessarily Forwards

When a slinky hits the stairs, and sudden shrapnels splinter away from the forward motion of the contraption and embed themselves into your skin- you can only think that this wasn’t to be expected. Still, the pain and the nuisance are all too real and too inescapable, and once you pass the seismic waves of shock, you realize that you’ve got so many options for moving on at your disposal.

These are some of your first thoughts: how do I get out of this? How do I move forward? What does “forward” look like?

Tragedy, trauma, and experiences are only linear in their occurrence. They are spasmodic and zig-zag in their repercussions and in their recovery. The slinky malfunction and the moments leading up to it are nothing compared to the headache that follows the process of removing the springs.

Bouncing back though, or moving on, that should never be the goal. It’s unrealistic. It is too clean-cut and too vague, and any attempt at doing this is just like stepping into quicksand; in other words, the world becomes stagnant, still, and sinking. You move with too much haste until the stuck-in-place sensation you get is unavoidable and then there’s nothing you can do.

Society paints resilience, the process of “bouncing back,” as getting back to normal, but you spend your moments talking to the woman in the chapel with an Irish accent, and she admits that normal is something one can never go back to in a time like this. In a time where her lilting voice is muffled by a paper mask, and her eyes reflect back the damage of entrusting too much to the silver lining or the narrative that we’ll be back to business soon enough. It took a pandemic, and it took movements and narratives from the long silenced to realize this glaring, stark truth.

Rather, resilience is moving in any direction that is best fit for the healing of an individual

of a mass crowd

of the world.

For some, it is taking a look back on a boat towards a future that may not be ready for their arrival. It is holding onto pieces of the bridge that collapsed underneath your black-soled shoes as you wade in the water. It is then visiting the gravestone of someone you loved and cherished, and reminiscing on how that event gave you the life you lead now- as imperfect as it is. You visit that gravestone again a year later, and the sentiments of anger and betrayal might morph into that of indifference and half-hearted peace. For some, maybe it is letting the hatchet oxidize in the rain before burying it in the pliable soil in the backyard.

Resilience is not returning to the “before.” It is creating something worth fighting for in the “after.” It is using the fragments of the slinky and melting it into a chunk of metal in which you can engrave your survival upon.

That metal- that remembrance or honoring of what you have been through to get to this point- is your resilience. You may put it in your nightstand drawer, eyeing it every now and then. Or you can be showing it to others in the privacy of your kitchen, helping them empathize by lightly pressing on the film of their bubble. The beauty in resilience is it is your choice for the direction, for the course- it is not a blanket term like “forward.”

Resilience respects the silence before speaking, the pause between one’s finished sentence and the other person’s response. Resilience is equal parts listening to the voice of the one who carries metal and giving voice to your own. It is a “take-two-steps-forward-one-step-back-two-steps -back-then-a-jump-to-the-left” process, and in this non-linear progression resilience roots itself in the human mind and heart.