Resiliency Is a Choice—Not a Skill

Life is difficult.

This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand it and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Thus begins, The Road Less Travelled, by M. Scott Peck, one of the greatest and most accessible books on the human condition that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. My therapist gave it to me when I was twenty-two, just hatched from college and home, and out in the “real world” for the first time. I remember reading this passage over and over, knowing it was true from the get go, but wanting to deny it none-the-less. It would take the next two decades to finally surrender to it.

Life is difficult, it’s the nature of living in a body. At its most basic, energy and effort are required at every turn to care for and manage the physical form, to keep it fed, clothed and safe. Add to this other bodies to take care of, as well as a community to build, and lastly the things we want to make/sell/buy and all the effort that goes into our possessions…indeed life is difficult.

And I haven’t even mentioned the emotional difficulty of being in relationship with one another. Having a form takes effort, yet it seems that for many of us, we see our difficulties as abnormal, as a punishment, as if life should be easy. The paradox is, once we accept life isn’t easy, we actually begin to live with ease.

Lately, I’ve seen a lot written about how younger generations aren’t developing resiliency, the character trait in which one meets a challenging task and rather than give up, keeps trying until the task has been completed. Instead of seeing a difficult homework assignment as important, today’s kids tend to become anxious and are scared of failing. Rather than keep at it, they give up, or blame the teacher, for their inability to see the task through to completion. There’s abundant advice out there on how we can teach children resiliency, such as giving them chores to accomplish at an early age, or supporting them with difficult tasks as they navigate the complexities of their school and social lives. We’re told we need to teach them to “never give up” and that if we don’t, they won’t be able to face the challenges ahead.

It does fall to us to teach our children well, but I don’t think resiliency is a skill, rather it’s a choice that each of us has to make. We don’t learn to never give up, we accept that doing is the nature of life, because life is work. There is no escaping it, indeed there is no other path than to keep going and never give up.

The choice to accept that life is difficult is the moment one becomes resilient.

What if our kids aren’t able to face the stress, pain and work before them because we, the adults of this age, aren’t able to face the stress, pain and work before us? Instead of meeting the difficulties, we act as if they’re temporary, something that shouldn’t be, and tell ourselves fairy tales that someday we’ll get to a point where all the difficulty falls away, and we never have to struggle again. We avoid facing the truth by telling lies to hide the fact that life is difficult and there’s no getting around it. And we teach our children the same lies, destroying any chance at developing the resilient character needed to master life.

Our culture does not reward hard work. We resent those who enjoy working, calling them workaholics and accusing them of avoiding leisure. Something must be wrong if you’d rather work than sit around and binge Netflix. Work is seen as an evil that must be eradicated. We hold dear the idea that once we achieve whatever goal we have, we will never work again. That somehow, work will disappear, if we follow the rules of engagement. When we’ve made it, life will be easy and we’ll sit around all day and play golf. Out there, in the future, is a world where no one works, and everyone is happy.

This, my friends, is a lie. There is no future where no one works, because life in the body requires work. Even the richest among us must clean their bodies, wipe their asses after a shit, and chew and swallow their food. They have to exercise and eat right, which takes work. Ask any homemaker and they’ll tell you that work never ends. If you’re awake, something needs to be done, because life is work. Only the dead can truly rest.

I hope I don’t sound old and grumpy. I’m actually quite the opposite. I still don’t like to work, and there is some work I’d rather do (like write my novels) than others (like cooking dinner), but after all these years, I finally don’t resent the fact either. Rather than seeking to find a day when all work stops, for after thirty plus years of adult life the work just keeps coming and coming, or to organize my time to the minute in order to maybe get some time to do what I want, because the moment I sit down to do what I want someone will always need my help, I’ve begun to meet each moment and ask, “What needs to be done now?” In this way, I no longer resent the fact that life is difficult, nor do I resent those who don’t “do their fair share.” What is anyone’s fair share really? If something needs to be done, then someone needs to do it, even if that person is me.

I’d agree that our children are anxious because they lack resiliency, yet I'm not convinced the reason for this is because we’ve spoiled them. Perhaps, rather than teach them the truth that life is difficult, we've lied to them, and taught them that in order to be truly happy, the work of life must be avoided. We do this with the subtle tales that we ourselves believe and actually glorify. Perhaps if we take the time to look at these lies, and the stories we tell each other, we can begin to see the truth of life and make a choice to accept its difficulties and thus, become resilient.

Here are three of the biggest lies perpetuated in our society that teach us that the work of life is unnatural and something to be avoided at all costs.

1.       Happily Ever After

We all know this one—the entire wedding industry, as well as every Disney tale, is based upon it. The reason for our unhappiness is that we’re alone and the moment we find the perfect person, we’ll be happy. Moreover, the only effort that needs to be put forth is buying a diamond ring and planning a nice, big wedding. This lie teaches our children that falling in love is easy and without effort, you’ll know he’s the one at first glance. It will also solve all of your problems. Life ceases to be work if you’ve found your one true love. If there are arguments, he’s not the one. Romance doesn’t require work, just a kiss. Once the honeymoon phase is over however, the real work of love sets in, and many of us panic, assuming something must be wrong. Unhappiness festers, we’re no longer glowing. Soon we either constantly fight, or avoid one another. After that, many divorce. Our love stories often imply that we will struggle in other relationships until we find our soul mate, and then everything falls into place. You’ll find that prince and live happily ever after, knowing his every desire and meeting it with perfection. And if that’s not the case, if instead it takes effort to keep the flame going, then someone has done something wrong. Either way, blame begins and as soon as that happens, we breakup, hoping to find someone else who can be our ideal partner and make life easier. This lie teaches our children that love and sex don’t take any effort at all, and that in fact, if they do take effort, then something is wrong with you.

2.       Retirement

An economic concept that is only a few generations old, this is the idea that if you save your money for forty years while working for the man, you can retire when you’re sixty and never have to work again. While many men born in the thirties through the fifties actually have experienced retirement, but most of us born since 1965 will not have this luxury, and it’s driving Gen X and Y crazy. Two recessions have decimated their retirement plans and pensions. The cost of living is so high, very few will be able to retire like their fathers did. The fact that we won’t be able to spend our golden years golfing under the Florida sun may feel like a failure, as if we’ve done something wrong. But here’s the deal, any woman in the early Boomer age group will tell you that they never actually retired. The work of the house continued, even after the breadwinner left his traditional job to live off his pension. Her work actually increased because she had to take care of him all day, in addition to the household work she’d been doing since she married. Retirement has been, for the most part, a white, male dream. And here’s something else, the idea of refraining from “work” for the last thirty years of your life is an entirely new concept. Prior to 1935, if you lived, you worked, most likely on a farm, or factory, or if you were rich you managed the farm and factory until your last breath, or until your health rendered you incompetent and your children took over while you wasted away in a rocker on the front porch, talking nonsense to the grandchildren. Regardless, you worked until your body no longer functioned. Then came the baby boomers, leaving work by 60, some even younger, and building 55+ communities in the sunniest places across the nation. Suddenly, after thousands upon thousands of years of working till death, we no longer had to. Caring for our elderly makes sense, but the myth of retirement has taught us that to work is a curse that you must plan to leave as soon as you can, and that if you play your cards right, you’ll be sitting pretty the last thirty years of your life. It’s a myth that teaches all of us, including our kids, that life shouldn’t be about work, and that the only reason we do it is to make money. This completely ignores the fact that we actually work to live, and live to work, regardless of our retirement schemes. Even if you quit your job, you will still work. Our communities, homes and families need our efforts, and taking care of those aspects of life can be very difficult, at any age. Regardless, after a mere seventy years, the retirement myth has already begun to fall apart, because we lack the economic discipline to make it a reality.

3.       Robotic Utopia

The myth that work is beneath us is what drove us to enslave one another in the first place. Work is for the “working class” and the elites have long tried to avoid it. First they captured people from other nations to use as labor, buying and selling human flesh to avoid the grueling work that needs to be done to support homo sapien life on Earth. They also created class systems to provide a plethora of human capital to do the dirty work of life. When nations began to make slavery illegal and then formed unions to protect worker’s rights, we turned to machines and enslaved them. Today the fairy tale of our times is a utopia where none of us works at all while Rosie the Robot does everything, including wiping our asses as well as providing orgasms. We’re both excited and fearful of this future—for if robots can do all the work, then what will we do? Oh, how will man live if he is idle? Again, any homemaker will tell you that work continues, even if you don’t go into the office. It is nearly impossible to be idle if you live in the body. It will wake you to pee and your stomach will grumble until you get some food. You must care for yourself and the home around you. Yes, machines make that labor easier, but the labor of life still exists. We must work at our relationships (see number one above), we must raise our children, we must learn to communicate, we must put on our clothes and clean our bodies. Robots can’t save us from the work of life, so far they’ve just allowed us to get more of that work done in a day. This is wonderful, I can do all my laundry in three hours rather than three days, but the clothes still need to be put in the hamper and washed. Longing for a future where no one does anything while machines drone around us doing the work of life teaches our children that the efforts they put in right now are beneath them, work that someone, or something, else should do, and will in the future. At which point, all their efforts in school and work are useless, if they’re just going to be replaced by machines. How does a generation remain hopeful when they’re constantly being told that they’re not really needed, because robots are just going to take their jobs?

There are many other lies about work and the effort of life that we tell ourselves, but these three—perfect marriages, retirement, and a future where robots do all of our work—encourage us to meet the work of the now with suspicion. We’re constantly trying to avoid the work, or be more efficient, or assume that if something is difficult, something is wrong. This is the root of all suffering—attachment to the idea that life should be easy.

Plain and simple, life is work and trying to avoid work ruins our relationships, our creative endeavors and our internal spirits. Depression seeps in when we realize it’s never going to be better than it is now. We get angry at others for not doing their share, or worse, for asking us to help. Our children need our time and attention, our spouses need our love, our parents need our help, our communities need our efforts and above all, our democracy needs our engagement. All of this is difficult and takes effort.

The paradox, according to M. Scott Peck, is a simple one. Once we accept that life is difficult, the work just is. Nothing more, nothing less. Meeting each moment and doing the work that is needed brings ease to the worried mind. This is resilience, and rather than try to teach it, life asks that we embody it, one activity at a time.

In Defense of Work

“When I retire from work, I will finally live the life I’ve always wanted.”

Employment. Earning a living. Our life’s work. Career. Vocation.

Retirement. Freedom. Doing what I really want. Finally free.

What’s the deal with our relationship to work? When I was young, I was told to get a good job, earn a living, then retire and live a life free of work. I would listen to the adults around me and wonder what it meant. As if the only work we do is for another in order to receive money. Where does this idea come from? For if it’s true, then the human being doesn’t do a lick of work before getting that good job, and then after sixty, doesn’t work again.

Anyone who thinks paid work is the only work to be done in life has never been a homemaker. Or a child. Because homemakers and children know, being alive is work.

For children, work looks like play. It begins with learning to walk, talk and think. For three years after birth we work, work, work. Never still, moving, tasting, touching, smelling and yelling! The idea that being alive is just a nine-to-five effort is unthinkable to a growing child. Sleep is the only time that work doesn’t happen. After age three, children play in order to gain social and intellectual skills. Build it up, break it down. Climb the trees and throw the apples. Chase butterflies and jump rope. All of it is work. Granted, it’s not drudgery, but why does pain have to be a part of the definition of “real work?”

But we don’t let children remain in this state for long. As soon as they’re old enough, it’s time to stop playing and start working! Welcome to the adult world—doing what you hate until you’re 65. Then you get to play again.

But do you? Just because you no longer go into the office, doesn’t mean work is no longer necessary. As a homemaker, I haven’t gone into the office for 16 years. But I’m busy from sun up to sun down. 24-7. Raising children is work. Cleaning the house is work. Managing the family schedule is work. Paying the bills is work. All of it is work. Unpaid, but work none-the-less. And the only part that I’ll ever retire from is the raising of the children. It seems that if I follow conventional wisdom, I’ll need to get a 9-to-5 job in order to retire from homemaking!

The point here is that work for some reason has become a dirty word. In addition, so has play. We resent those who don’t do enough work, and we resent those who make us work. We dream of the day when we’re free from work, yet the work of life never ceases.

Life is work. And work isn’t evil.

Labor is a part of the human condition. If that weren’t true, we’d all be Harry Potter. Magic would take care of everything. Even if we automate most of our work, we will not find ourselves free from the work of the body. We need to eat, sleep and exercise. Our immune systems depend on all three. Thus work is required to prepare and acquire food, to keep a safe place to sleep, and to move our bodies. This work doesn’t go away, until we die.

I don’t believe I’ll ever retire, whatever that means. My life has been a constant stream of work, and I feel blessed by it. Some is paid, most isn’t. But all of it is work. I can’t escape it, the only thing I could do is ignore it. But I don’t fear work. Actually, I love it. I’m happy to clean, cook, write novels, manage schedules, write code, raise my children, love my husband, keep in touch with friends, help out at school, build community, read up on current events, shop for healthy food, do the laundry, care for our pets, garden, spin, learn new things, plan vacations, and work hard at keeping my body fit.

Many would look at that list and say, “Yes, but you chose it. You don’t have to do any of it, the way a career demands.” To that I say, wrong. My choice at eighteen years of age had actually been to work fulltime as a software engineer until I couldn’t get out of bed as an old woman. Eventually though, I left the office and stayed home with the kids to balance our lives and provide quality childcare. The work of the home then is something that felt thrust upon me at first. But now it is the rhythm of life.

The work of life must be done, just like a career. Sure we can pay others to do some of it (cook, clean, baby sit, etc.) and we can ignore eating well, sleeping and exercise. But eventually, our bodies and relationships catch up with us and that work we’ve been ignoring can no longer be ignored.

In the end I’ve decided to love the word, WORK. To work is to be alive. To be alive is to be blessed. I see no beginning or end to this. The time to live the lives we love is always only now. To wait until we no longer have to work, is to wait until the moment of death to finally begin to live.

Seems strange to me.

Another Year Around the Sun

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."

Albert Einstein 

2014 is about to end.

At least that’s what our calendars say. Our clocks have almost ticked away the 31,556,926 seconds it takes for our planet to travel around the sun. This planet-star dance is meaningful to us as humans. We celebrate its end with drink, food and music. In America, 83% of us will spend over $200 each to eat dinner on New Year’s Eve at a fancy restaurant. 1% will spend over $1000.

At this time of the year, we often review the past and set goals to accomplish in the next 31,556,926 seconds our Earth will take to travel her solar journey once more. We make promises, like to write sequels, or screenplays (oh wait, those are my resolutions) and loose some weight (that’s not my resolution, I gave up that battle long ago.)

Since the beginning of time, we’ve honored and celebrated the annual cycle of life. We watch the seasons come and go and we know that as the winter comes and all of nature dies, we too are slowly dying. Thus we make plans that give our lives meaning and make the most of our time on Earth.

Yet lately time has become more irrelevant to me. Yes, I am getting older. I see it in the wrinkles around my eyes and in the fact that I’m the shortest person in the house now that my sons have entered their teens. My eldest just started driving. Sometimes, when I look at him I’m surprised at what I see. Where’s that adorable two-year-old boy who sat on my lap for hours while I read him “The Little Prince” or “The Chronicles of Narnia?” Honestly, it seems like yesterday, and I’m not just saying that. But according to time, it’s been 410,240,038 seconds since those days.

Where does that time go? I see its passing in the changes outside of me, but within all these moments are one. They mush together into one big mess and I understand Dr. Who when he defines it as a, “...big ball of wibbly, wobbly, time-y wimey stuff.”

And it’s not just the past that’s all one for me--at times I sense the future as well. I feel the sequel to my novel is already published, even though we haven’t even begun editing. I think I’m an 80 woman doing the tango on “So You Think You Can Dance” and amazing everyone with my grace at such an old age. Yes, even the future, which only lives in my mind, also feels like it’s happened.

Perhaps this is because I’ve spent the last three years immersed in an immortal world where time exists, but has a much different meaning. If we lived forever, would a simple trek around the sun be worth celebrating? Would we mark off our ages in years, or in events, or at all?

Maybe I’ve been reading too much about quantum physics. I admit it, I’m addicted. What if there are multiple universes? If so, what am I celebrating in those other places? Do we mark our years in the Earth’s solar dance, or in some other way? How can I be me in any other space and time than here? Am I not my experiences? Yet if I’m energy that’s slowed into this form, then where exactly do I actually end?

I don’t have any answers. To satisfy my endless curiosity, I write stories about the things I see in my dreams and in my mind. One thing I do know is that the way time marches forward in the material world is not the same as the way time runs around in my head, or my heart. They are very different things.

So I’ll be celebrating the New Year with my friends and I hope you too are doing the same. At midnight we’ll pause and toast the New Year. I’ll probably ask myself why that moment in time is relevant and if indeed a new year has begun. My dear friend will tell me to stop being so "trippy." And I’ll give thanks once more for all the blessings in my life.

I also give thanks to anyone who’s reading this. I’m grateful for your time and your support, in whatever universe it might exist. May your 2015 be the stuff of dreams for each and every one of you.

Time For An Aging Upgrade

It seems everyone I meet is afraid of growing old. It’s so bad that even thirty-six year old women bemoan that they’re reaching the age of no return, unless they can get married and have a child soon. There’s a race in our society to accomplish as much as we can, as soon as we can, because once we hit forty, we’re doomed.

Doomed from promotion, if you’re a salesperson. Doomed from motherhood, if you haven’t conceived yet. Doomed from starring in a Hollywood movie, if you’re an actress. Even in Silicon Valley, the race continues, and if you haven’t created some new great app and sold your company by the age of thirty, you might as well hang it up old man.

Personally, I think this behavior is incredibly silly. Most would say that our society encourages this insane idea that life is over by forty through advertising, media and entertainment. That advertising never worked on me. Even when I was younger, I wondered why people seemed to give it their all until middle age and then either turn to treatment after treatment to stay “young”, or let it all go and grow unhealthy quickly, as if waiting for Death to knock on their door at any minute.

The truth is, Death isn’t going to knock on our door at forty. Or even fifty. Nor is life even close to being over at middle age. What if our obsession with youth has nothing to do with what’s sold to us? What if instead, it’s an old, biologically based fear that lives within us so deeply, we don’t notice it? 

What if our consciousness hasn't caught up to the fact that humans in the Information Age live much longer than we’re programmed to think?

In the 1900’s, the average life expectancy for a male in America was 46.3. Women got a few extra years, 48.3. As the nation grew, so did the life expectancy, little by little. By 1920, the average male lived to be 53. Slowly the age went up to the 60’s by the late 1940’s and when our fathers were born, the average was at an all time high of 66!

This meant that during the advent of our entertainment, business and advertising sectors, people really did die between 40 – 50 years of age, quite regularly. So it was true back then that if one didn’t achieve their dreams by forty, they only had a few years before Death arrived and it was all over. With time, this sort of thing became the expectation—and our dreams, hopes and visions as a people went with it. But along with the growth of our nation came improvements in health care, vaccinations and medical innovation. Science has changed the game.

Fast-forward to today and you’ll find that life expectancy has gone up, even in the past few years. In 2009 it was 78.6, in 2010 it was 79! This means that we’ve gained an extra 30 + years in a little over a century! And it certainly means that life isn’t over at forty and if you buy into that lie, you have almost forty years of waiting around for a death that just isn’t going to happen as soon as you think.

It gets even better. In my own circle, many of the grandparents are nearing 100 when they die. In our family alone we had a grandmother live to be 92, another almost 97, an uncle who was 96 and a third matriarch who passed at 101!

When I look at these numbers I don’t feel the least bit old at forty-two. Not even close. Hell, I’m not even halfway there. I look back at all I’ve done in four decades with the satisfaction of knowing that I get to do all that, and more, in the four decades to come. Imagine it! All the people I’ve met and all the people I’ve yet to know. All the things I’ve seen, and the big wide world still waiting. All the love I’ve shared, and the intense amount of love I have yet to experience. It’s like I have a second life that's just begun. In many ways, my questions are those of the high school senior. What shall I study? Where shall I live? What's my next step as I venture out once again?

Of course, Death can take anyone at any time. Accidents happen. Cancer, heart attacks and other modern plagues are concerns. But if we’re aging naturally, which is how most of us are going to experience life, then why in the world do we race to get it all done by forty?

Personally, I can’t sit around for the next sixty years assuming I missed my chance. Every precious minute of my life is my chance.

It’s time for us to re-boot our life expectations, embrace our humanity and expect to live much longer than we ever have on this good, green Earth. Life isn’t over at forty, or fifty or even sixty. Life is long and we’re all better for it.

Besides, I haven’t even begun to take into account the Singularity, which we all know is just around the corner…