Yesterday, my mom and I spoke about resilience — and what it means to have it. She was commenting that a mutual acquaintence didn’t exert much resilience during a difficult life experience as evidenced by their poor behavior. I said perhaps we don’t have as much resilience as we think we have. I thought about it more, and I think we were both wrong.
- Resilience
- The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
The history of resilience:
- Etymologically, resilience is derived from Latin, resilire, meaning to “leap back” or “recoil.”
- In the 17th-19th, engineers used the word to describe a material’s capacity to absorb energy when deformed and release it upon unloading, like a sponge that recoils when you stop squeezing it.
- In the 20th century, resilience found a new home in psychology, referring to a person’s capacity to adapt to stress ,trauma, or adversity without long-term dysfunction.
My issue with these definitions is not the definitions themselves; it’s how I see people interpret the definitions. And the interpretation that I frequently observe is: “someone is resilient if they show steady stoic-like responses to hardships.” Well, withstanding or recovering don’t have to imply “stoic-like” response to tragedy.
Here’s how I think of it:
- Capacity is like a container — there’s a limit to how much can be in the container before it overflows. Capacity requires self-awareness.
- Withstand or recover quickly — can mean “stoic-like” response but it can also mean to return to a pre-hardship state, or persist in a weakened state before total collapse, or something similar.
Therefore, I prefer this interpretation of resilience: being so self-aware of one’s capacity to endure hardship before they totally collapse that they’re not at all surprised by their reaction to difficulties. Said more simply: not being surprised by how one reacts when shit gets real.
Under my interpretation, there’s no expectation that you be “stiff upper lip” when life gets tough. My interpretation requires you to develop self-awareness for your capacity to endure hardship and to be mindful enough that your reaction doesn’t surprise you.
It’s easy to act like nothing’s wrong when the world is on fire. It’s much harder to be self-aware that the world is on fire, you’re on fire, and you’re not surprised that you’re in shock.
Last modified on 2026-02-16