If caregiving teaches us nothing else, it is that each and everyone of us is capable of being resilient. That ability to weather whatever Life has to serve up and come back smiling.
In a very real sense, the recent pandemic has provided just such a caregiving challenge. As with any such a challenge, it has pointed out our strengths and weaknesses – both as individuals and as groups.
Several personalities have been bantering about the term “resilience” lately, which always makes me cringe because you never know if they are using a commonly accepted definition or an impromptu redefinition to virtue signal in the moment.
Before the language takes a hit and we are all thoroughly confused by our common language, here is my take.
Innate or learned?
The nature vs. nurture debate can certainly apply here. When Life takes one of those weirdly severe turns (like a pandemic or a loved one getting ill), I still find it entertaining how people sort themselves out into one of two groups. Either we are scared but willing to go on or we are heading for the exits. No real in between responses seem to show up.
Culture, age, and gender don’t seem to exert any influence here either. You are in for the battle at hand, or you are reminding others to phone in the results to you. If there is a determining factor of who goes in which direction, I haven’t found it yet.
Attitude is still everything
The pandemic did spawn a significant group of opportunists. From sleazy scam artists to even sleazier politicians, a whole bunch of folks spied a golden chance to pursue their individual ends under the guise of presenting specious agendas to a vulnerable population. Boy, have they ever been having a field day!
Behind the sleaze however, I have observed a whole lot of personal insecurity. The louder the shouting, the more it showed that the person shouting was at least as frightened as the people he/she was attempting to frighten.
This insecurity carried with it a pessimism that guided the conversation. It is much like the emotional turmoil of puberty that all of us experienced once in our lives. Why someone would willingly take on all that uncertainty and fear of everything in Life a second time is bewildering to me. Then again, caregiving has given me a different perspective.
With this second puberty has been the self-made assumption of superiority and abdication of responsibility we experimented with as young people. Trying to throw my weight around with parents and siblings always resulted in the life lesson that I really wasn’t as good as I thought.
Humility 101.
Holding others responsible for my own happiness was also another of those failures that taught me that to stand on my own two feet was work. Not impossible to do but work, nonetheless.
Emotions are important
We are emotional creatures. Preferably not ruled by emotions but working with them as part of the picture.
At our core, we are caring beings. We love. Our life, our family, our friends, and (hopefully) ourselves are all included in this love. Balancing the emotion with an attention to practical matters is what makes us whole and well-adjusted individuals. We become the good citizens of the world.
An overabundance of emotional response is far less effective for problem-solving than using a balanced approach. When everyone on a situation is operating on pure emotion, direction is lost.
I keep this in mind when people come at me with a fully charged emotional outburst. A natural inclination is to respond in kind, but a learned response is to avoid adding more emotion. Come back with calm. Add reasoning if appropriate but be calm. Don’t play that emotion card.
There is no rule that says that any emotions we feel must be processed on the spot. Feel free to fall apart later. I did this type of thing when family went full emotion upon the admission of Dad to the hospital once. I felt the rush but refrained from acting on that fear. Family was doing plenty of venting anyway. I just checked in with myself that night to feel and process those feelings.
Responses as empowerment
Don’t forget body language in confrontations. My favorite response of late is to smile. A smile is one of the last things the angry/insecure individual is expecting in response to an attack. Surprise the antagonist with an off-script response. Remember that the fight they are picking is carefully scripted in their mind.
We are always empowered to not follow someone else’s script.
Make sure your response is your own. There is considerable peer pressure these days (remember – second puberty) that gets shared in social media. If you hold a particular opinion, great. If a group has not so subtly provided you with a prescribed response to a situation, you still have the option to opt out of the group opinion.
Find out your ideas for yourself. Follow the effective maxim to “Trust but verify”. Group-think has some significant shortcomings, not least of which is reasoning that lacks evidence. Especially when you get into the more extreme views (on either end of the spectrum), the supporting evidence is often conflicting or entirely absent, and the compensatory incivilities and vulgarities are present only to distract from these weaknesses.
Be yourself. Enjoy the personal growth that you have experienced from the challenges. Enjoy the resulting resilience of character. You are much stronger than you once were. You now know that you are also capable of much more than you once thought.
“There comes a time in your life when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who do not. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”
― José N. Harris
Dad's Back 