"Resilience is not a DIY endeavour"
This article makes such sense to me.
I think there's comfort in believing that we are mostly responsible for the fact and speed and quality of our life changes. This is true if you want change for yourself (all you need is yourself!), and also if you want to see others change (you're off the hook! all they need is themselves!).
But our selves -- our characters, skills, attitudes -- are only one dimension of our lives: the social and economic systems we inhabit, our places in them, the security of those places -- these have enormous impact, and are largely impervious to our individual efforts. We need to stop pretending that we can routinely overcome the force and weight of those impacts by an effort of will alone.
It's nonsense, it's damaging, it's exhausting, and it barely budges those systems a micron.
It's so noxious, in fact, that we should come up with a stupid, oxy-moronic phrase to sum it up, something that sounds straightforward until you consider it for a few seconds. I'm casting my vote for "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps".
I think there's comfort in believing that we are mostly responsible for the fact and speed and quality of our life changes. This is true if you want change for yourself (all you need is yourself!), and also if you want to see others change (you're off the hook! all they need is themselves!).
But our selves -- our characters, skills, attitudes -- are only one dimension of our lives: the social and economic systems we inhabit, our places in them, the security of those places -- these have enormous impact, and are largely impervious to our individual efforts. We need to stop pretending that we can routinely overcome the force and weight of those impacts by an effort of will alone.
It's nonsense, it's damaging, it's exhausting, and it barely budges those systems a micron.
It's so noxious, in fact, that we should come up with a stupid, oxy-moronic phrase to sum it up, something that sounds straightforward until you consider it for a few seconds. I'm casting my vote for "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps".
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