In Lebanon, ‘resilience’ is almost a badge of honor, one we are given as soon as we come into this world. We grow up wearing it on our sleeves, and ultimately pass it on to our children.
“We’ve been through worse”, we reply with pride, filling our chest when someone comes for a welfare check, brushing off the question. However, somewhere along the line ‘resilience’ stopped meaning ‘strength’ or ‘courage’, instead it turned into ‘endurance at any cost’...
By definition, resilience is the process of adapting, adjusting, and coping with challenging life situations through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility.
However, this definition alone is not enough. To truly understand resilience, we must look back at past hardships one might’ve gone through, their causes, and consequences, in order to move beyond them.
This understanding stands in contrast to the idea engraved in our minds: An almost stoic phenomenon, silently getting back up again without a complaint or protest.
We think we were born resilient, but were we really? Or were we forced to become so overnight?
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. It is built brick by brick, by breaking down, getting up, falling again, restarting, rebuilding...A cycle unlike any other, one that teaches us how to heal a little more each time it comes around.
Throwing ourselves onto the next project isn’t the courageous move we believe it to be.
“After the storm comes the calm.” Let us dwell a little longer on this expression, calm means regulated, stable, and content. After any storm, we believe it is required to get back on our feet instantly, dismissing what we went through, too easily.
What we call resilience in these moments is often nothing more than survival: this state of constant tension, feeling on the edge, prone to collapse at any moment. The urgency to move on becomes a coping mechanism built on concealing rather than healing...
Patchworking past wounds
We are called ‘resilient’, but do we truly feel that way?
Perhaps, the major transgenerational inheritance we got was one singular word to describe an entire nation, a word we went on to wear like a second skin. Admittedly, we are in need of redefining resilience, not as a limitless capacity to endure, nor the ability to return unscathed, but instead, as a mindful engagement with our past. In a culture often equating strength with continuity, the act of stepping back remains counterintuitive.
By rethinking resilience, we do not erase it; we reclaim it, far from expectations of bravery and strength, closer to awareness and sustainability. Only then can we evolve beyond sustenance and become more, shall we say, humane.