A Lesson In Resilience
On a brisk September day in 1620, 102 passengers and a crew of roughly 30 left England embarking on a grueling 66-day journey marked by disease and death. According to history, the Pilgrims undertook the voyage to escape religious persecution in England. The Mayflower, originally destined for the mouth of the Hudson River at the northern edge of England's Virginia colony, went off course and settled in Cape Cod Bay. All surviving passengers moved ashore and colonized at Plymouth.
What we learn from the Pilgrim story is a remarkable example of the resilience. The resilient pilgrims had the ability to look at critical situations in a new way, finding creative approaches toward solving a problem. Weakened by their two-month voyage, the resilient pilgrims managed their emotions, stayed calm under pressure and persevered.
Read the rest at AOL/Huffington Post Healthy Living.
Thanks as usual to Gina Misiroglu of Red Room for putting me in touch with the Huffington Post people. It’s just one of the great ways she's bringing traffic to Red Room and getting attention for Red Room's authors.
About Rita
Rita Schiano is an author, keynote speaker, and founder of Live A Flourishing Life™, offering personal and professional mentoring programs. Rita is also an adjunct professor, teaching Philosophy, Leadership, and Stress Management courses.
From Resilience to Dependency
Rita,
As you note, we could certainly learn a few lessons from the perseverance of the Pilgrims, but from what I've heard and seen of the politically correct curriculum in some of our failing public schools, students are more likely to disparage the Pilgrims as intruders, if, indeed, any history is taught at all.
While agreeing with your thesis that adversity has traditionally built resilience, don't you also see in modern times, admittedly with some encouraging exceptions, an increasing pattern/trend of adversity building dependencies and addiction, making it unlikely that any future historian will ever describe us as the "greatest generation".
Response to From Resilience to Dependency
Hi Brenden,
Thank you for your comment. Rearding your question, I don't think adversity builds dependencies and addiction, more leads to it. The attitudes and skills of resilience help one work through and overcome adversity. Helping people understand and build resilience is something I am passionate about. I think for too long we've wallowed in enabled behavior and the blame game. To be resilient require a willingness to accept personal responsibility for the habits that serve them and the habits that don't serve them, and a desire to live an Aristotelian virtuous life.
Ideal vs. The Real
Rita,
Let's all fervently hope our political leaders, rather than regressing to the "blame game" and kicking the can down the road, will demonstrate some of that Pilgrim creativity and perseverance in solving our current problems of Federal debt, unemployment, and entitlement reform.
We are probably perceiving similar modern attitudes and behavior but filter our perceptions through differing frames of reference: yours with focus on idealism and optimism and mine being more pessimistic. For example, your recognition that many people are wallowing "in enabled behavior and the blame game" is basically the point of my comment as well. A goodly portion of the "enabled behavior" takes the form of dependencies and addictions. That aside, I suspect you would actually agree with me that Faulkner "got it right" in showing in his writing and his Nobel acceptance speech that "Mankind will not merely endure; it will prevail."
The question is will we collectively "prevail" with the traditional values of our forefathers relatively intact or significantly compromised? For better or for worse, my current state of mind is roughly that of Candide at the end of Voltaire's satiric romp: "Let us cultivate our garden." [If you have a few minutes, please read and react to my earlier Red Room blog "The Pros and Cons of Having Illusions"]
With your impressive credentials and accomplishments, would you briefly set forth here (and perhaps more fully in a separate blog for your Red Room colleagues) examples of Aristotelian virtues today among what Chaucer called the "gold" people ("If gold rust, what shall iron do?"). I need help finding virtue among so much obvious "rust" today, especially among those who should be setting an example and "walking with us" rather than focusing primarily on their self-interests.
Brenden
Ideal vs. The Real
Hello Brenden,
Ah, if only more people read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics . . . I think he was correct in discussing the value of living a life of virtue, that is, living in the mean, in balance between the excesses and deficiencies of character. We certainly see a great deal of the character excess of hubris in so many of our leaders.
Potential vs. The Actual
Rita,
Please confirm that I am now understanding more clearly the "point" of your original blog and Huffington article, namely, that we are CAPABLE of and have the POTENTIAL for the perseverance and resilience of the Pilgrims as well as realizing the virtuous golden mean of Aristotle. Therein lies our best hope of approaching what Maslow called SELF-ACTUALIZATION in these areas.
In your role as a veritable modern Don Quixote in his quest to "reach the unreachable star" you are to be commended for pointing all of us in the right direction, as long as we remain firmly anchored in the reality of Shakespeare's wise observation (originally about love), "The will is infinite and the execution confined."
Agreeing with you fully about our proclivity for wallowing in excesses and deficiencies, I remain
Sincerely,
Brenden
From Resilience to Dependency
Rita,
As you note, we could certainly learn a few lessons from the perseverance of the Pilgrims, but from what I've heard and seen of the politically correct curriculum in some of our failing public schools, students are more likely to disparage the Pilgrims as intruders, if, indeed, any history is taught at all.
While agreeing with your thesis that adversity has traditionally built resilience, don't you also see in modern times, admittedly with some encouraging exceptions, an increasing pattern/trend of adversity building dependencies and addiction, making it unlikely that any future historian will ever describe us as the "greatest generation".