“I’m not happy at home.” “My job doesn’t satisfy me.” “How I wish my life were different!” And in the end I still stay in that house, with that job, in that life. Why does this happen?
We often find ourselves having to accept situations/things/people/attitudes that we don’t like because of factors that don’t depend on us. We get so used to accepting all this that over the years it becomes natural to accept anything even without having a real disadvantage from a hypothetical loss. For Hemingway the concept ofresiliencewe are very close to this vision of things.
“The world breaks everyone, and then many are strong in the broken places. But those it does not break, it kills. It kills impartially the very good and the very kind and the very brave. If you are not among them, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but it will not take any particular care.”
Ernest Hemingway
Acceptance and our capacity for resilience
In a much more dramatic way, it teaches us that resilience has two sides , one positive and one negative. It all depends on the character and how it is lived and perceived subjectively.
But how is it possible that the concept of resilience marries the principle of acceptance of situations? Simply through an excessive spirit of adaptation that makes one forget what the priorities of one’s life, one’s goals and one’s values really are, to focus on being able to resist in situations that do not belong to “one’s being”, in the name of obsessions, beliefs or self-imposed moral obligations.
“I’ll stay with my husband because otherwise my son will suffer!”, “what will people say if I leave that job?”, “I can’t like a woman, I should stay single instead, you know my dad and my mom?” “I shouldn’t ride a motorbike, women don’t do that “. So from the simple: “I can put up with my colleague who always talks” we move on to “I can put up with my boss who looks away because where can I find another job like that?” .
Perhaps this is what Hemingway meant in the above-mentioned sentence, who by going against the current and relatively attacking the concept of resilience showed its weak points.
Why shouldn’t you accept everything?
If we get used to accepting everything, to gloss over everything, life becomes an enormous burden with disastrous consequences on self-determination and onself-esteemIn situations like those mentioned above, one finds oneself having to fight against one’s own plans, which have gradually been redesigned following the acceptance of many situations .
The same projects remodeled according to external conditions by our will, may not be in line with what we would have expected from our future, a high spirit of resilience could make us settle for projects that are not our own, for remodeling of our own positive objectives only in part, for unpleasant situations. Conversely, knowing how to adapt could benefit those people who live temporary situations, or those periods of life defined as “bridge” periods , these people are very clear about what their objectives are and rather than adapting, they live these periods as periods of passage.
We must therefore always keep our goals firmly in mind and veer away from them only if it is our own considered decision . Everything that, for better or for worse, forces us to change our life plans must be evaluated in terms of what we really want without settling into the current condition in which we find ourselves.
