Are You Built for the Long Run?

On the afternoon severe storms came through our community last month, I surveyed the mess it left as I drove to an appointment. The damage was severe and heart breaking. Mature trees were missing limbs, some were broken in half, and many were uprooted. One large impressive oak tree fell near my home, revealing that it had no roots and was rotting from the inside. It looked substantial but was missing the things that would allow it to survive the storm.

 The storm damage reminded me of two books I had read about building resilience into our lives and those of our children. The authors sighted research on prominent ideas in our culture and questioned whether they help us weather life’s storms. Thankfully, they also provide strategies to help us (and our kids) become more resilient.

 The first book is Antifragile and the author, Nassim Nicholas Talib, investigates problems of randomness and uncertainty. In Antifragile he notes that some systems (he includes human beings in the category) become better or stronger because of difficulties and crises. These systems may have fragile parts but they develop strategies for protecting themselves from random dramatic stresses that occur, becoming anti-fragile.

 Reading the book I thought of the beachside live oaks I’d seen on Hilton Head Island, SC. Unlike their inland cousins, these trees are shorter and bent away from the prevailing winds to better protect themselves from random storms. Biologists tell us these trees develop tighter, tougher wood fibers on their windward sides and broader root systems to better hold the soil. If they lose leaves, their most fragile parts, to high winds they regenerate new growth more quickly than other species. As they age and endure more storms, the stress and pressures make them better, not worse.

 In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, authors Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff say that rather than helping us become Antifragile, our resilience is being undermined by three flawed ideas that are now widespread in our culture. The three are: 1) that we are (actually) fragile and, therefore, need protection from life’s difficulties; 2) that you can always trust your feelings to give you the right answer; and 3) that life is a battle between good or noble people and evil or despicable people. The authors conclude that embracing these ideas make us each more fragile, more susceptible to the pitfalls of emotional reasoning, and predisposed to using an “us versus them” defensive mindset that ignores the nuance and complexity of people and devalues their humanity.

 Our challenge is knowing when and how much to protect ourselves and our children from ideas, people, interactions and experiences that make us feel uncomfortable and how much to allow them (and us) to experience difficult situations and people. The authors of the two books convincingly argue that our cultural obsession with comfort has morphed into a mindset of self-protection that isolates us from situations and people who make us feel uncomfortable. It’s the next step, however, that causes real harm.

 Rather than viewing uncomfortable interactions and experiences as a normal part of life, we have come to a place where we don’t just seek to avoid these but mentally categorize them as abnormal and even evil. Our children also need to learn how to handle adversity and failure, and develop a self-image that withstands the difficult situations and people they’ll encounter.

 For example, both of my own children experienced being bullied in middle school – my daughter was on the receiving end of unkind statements of her female classmates (middle school girls can have wicked-sharp teeth) – and my son (a self-professed “band geek”) endured physical bullying by larger, stronger boys. In addition to helping them develop self-defense strategies (our son took tae-kwon-do to develop self-confidence), we taught them the fundamental truth that those same bullies weren’t evil but, rather, children struggling (albeit poorly) to figure out their own identities. We also taught them that we are never fully aware of the reasons people act as they do and that every person carries potential for beauty and horror within them.

 We need to be clear about what we want for our kids and ourselves.

 The truth is, we don’t simply want our kids and ourselves to be safe (ideologically, emotionally, and mentally). We want our children (and us) to be strong enough to handle life’s storms, and that’s different than being safe. Giving our kids opportunities to develop emotional strength, mental reasoning skills, and a shrewd-but-generous understanding of people equips them to handle life’s difficult situations and people. We want to foster emotional strength, endurance, understanding and the ability to make wise decisions in our children, rather than facilitating fragility and dependency. But we can’t give our children what we don’t personally possess.

 People don't set out to make themselves or their kids fragile, it happens because we don't understand what makes us better equipped to handle life. I'm always eager to help if you have questions about how you can do this in your own life. You can reach me here or at (865) 755-4543.