Resilient?
After facing disgrace after disgrace, a middle-aged woman continued smiling. It seemed like hardships made her stronger and helped her to be more comfortable in her own shoes. How did she do it?
Resilience, as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, is something that has always interested me. What makes some people more resilient than others? Can any person become resilient by performing certain actions, developing some attitudes, or embracing certain habits?
My first thought is that resilience can be developed with early childhood socialization. How a child learns to deal with interpersonal relationships, how he or she feels protected and loved by parents, and factors of these sort may contribute to the development of resilience.
My second thought is that an attitude of hope and the development of healthy and effective coping mechanisms can help a person become resilient. To me, it does not mean that the person will not experience the excruciating pain of some of life’s difficulties, but that the person will be able to accept them, make an effort to change them if possible, or just move on with wings of hope.
Would this necessarily mean that a person becomes resilient as a direct result of hardships experienced? Does it mean that the person necessarily must have a good support system in order to have a net to resort to in times of difficulty?
The topic raises many questions and elicits a desire to explore them. That is my purpose in the next few entries.
