I’ve just spent the morning getting my website back up to date. I fell behind on keeping it updated with my latest publications, just like I fell behind on everything after lockdown. Six months into the pandemic, I’m noticing a growing trend of articles about the importance of resilience, perhaps as it becomes clear that there’s no quick solution on the horizon and we all need to prepare for the long haul. As I start the work of catching up, I am guessing that I’m exhibiting resilience – I’m still here, after all – but I don’t particularly recognise myself in the articles about it. I wonder if a bit more honesty and a bit less insta-filtering would be helpful to everyone when we consider what resilience really is and why it matters.
Traditional media likes a good story – “I lost my job in lockdown but now I run a successful business”, “I used lockdown to get to my ideal weight” – and social media demands that those stories look good. In addition, everything is quick and condensed – “five steps to building greater resilience”, “three habits that all resilient people have” – in a way that may be easy to read but doesn’t leave much room for human frailty. I’m just a middle-aged woman in cheap leggings and an 80s Bon Jovi t-shirt. I’ve lost four pounds since lockdown, not enough to be transformative or even noticeable. I haven’t started a multi-million-pound business, signed a six-figure book deal or found my true love. By media standards, I’m a total lockdown loser. Despite this, I do have faith in my resilience.
Here’s what I have done in the last six months, every single day –
Got out of bed;
Taken vitamins;
Meditated;
Gone outside;
Read something new.
Not much, is it? Not really the stuff that double page spreads and loyal social media followings are made of. I also stopped doing a few things. I stopped drinking; I took twitter off my phone and limited all other social media accounts to 15 minutes; I let go of any thoughts where I compared myself to others. Again, nothing headline-grabbing in there, nothing that can inspire and teach others. Am I resilient or deluded?
The reason I believe I’m resilient is because I used the time – time when I clearly wasn’t becoming a serene yogi, baking banana bread or transforming into an entrepreneur – to think about what was important and what my goals should be in our altered world. Then I went towards those goals. Faced with financial ruin, I set aside time every week to apply for jobs, I reworked and refined my CV until I got responses and I learned how to deliver a good interview over zoom. I managed to get myself a new job and I started this week. Struggling to care for my Mum during lockdown, I asked for help again and again until I got what I needed. Feeling isolated, I spoke to my friends a lot. Whatever else the future holds for me, I know they’re at the heart of my happiness so I did my best to be a good friend, even when I was hurting – and I always will.
We’ve all got stories of hardship and worry from the last six months and it’s tempting to join the misery Olympics but it’s worth asking yourself if you want to win that race. Personally, I think I had it worse than some, better than others. However it feels, that’s where most of us will fall. That’s not to say I spent every day as an upbeat and hopeful person – some days I got my to-do list of essentials done by 8am and just watched the clock until it was a reasonable time to go to bed. Overall, though, I chose to suck it up and keep going. That is all resilience really is.
I am loathe to give advice, I don’t know what I’m doing most days and I’m nobody’s role model. I would say, let go of all the media noise, hold on to what matters and don’t give up. I appreciate that “suck it up” isn’t a particularly inspiring insta-quote, but it’s all I have. That and patience. One of my favourite books is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. It has great insights about writing (and life) and contains many lessons about resilience. The most important of those is to take things step by step – or bird by bird – and just keep going. You can’t solve everything overnight, just keep trying. I have to keep reminding myself of this. I can’t catch up on six months of lost time in a weekend. I can’t ever recover everything I’ve lost. All I can do is keep going – and that’s resilience.