the antidote to adversity

Chapter 260

Resilience, defined as the ability to adapt in a positive way in the presence of adversity ...

Resilience as defined here, is more needed and necessary than ever before. While the global pandemic hasn’t really raised the death rates around the world yet, it has stopped much of the commerce that makes up the Western life, and that is what is causing most of the stress on our local communities. This is where resilience will come into play or not. Don’t get me wrong, the additional deaths are causing fear, but the antidote to fear is different than the antidote to adversity. 

Resilience is not the lack fear or trepidation, nor the obliviousness or cluelessness that some Polly-Anna’s seem to have in abundance. Resilience isn’t just the ability to grind your teeth and outlast every negative even that comes into your universe (see Stubbornness or maybe Persistence). No resilience is a verb in the manner we are addressing it here today.

It calls for action. Actions that counter the adversity in some fashion. Actions that move you toward a different future than you were aiming toward before the adversity came along perhaps, but still moving forward. Taking this action changes everything, even if it fails to reach its objective. It changes you and me in the sense that we are immutable, refusing to quit and let adversity rob us of something we have been striving for and working toward. It changes the situation, even if it fails, because new factors and new energy have been applied to the adversity. It will change something, it alters the adversity in some manner.

This is positive adaptation.

This is resilience.

You can accomplish anything with this attitude.