Merry Resilience: My holiday wish for Boomer women, Part 4

In my first blog post in this series, I referred to the Vibrant Nation survey on resilience, in which eighty percent of us report that the older we have gotten, the more resilient we have become. This is an extraordinary statistic in itself…but there’s much more.

In the past, the popular conception of resilience centered around the notion that resilient people are like rubber bands, stretching to deal with challenge and change, then snapping back to their original shape. We held the vision of ourselves as resilient in the sense of being able to push through any obstacle, relying on our strength alone to emerge unchanged. But when you look at the results of our survey, you find the majority of our members using the language of flexibility and adaptability; the acknowledgement that while we may influence some or even many of the things that happen to us, “the ultimate outcome is in God’s hands.”

And here’s where the social scientists stop and the mystics kick in. Findings such as ours force the majority of academics who study such things as resilience to acknowledge the positive impact of a belief in a power greater than ourselves. But beyond that, traditional academic tools and language fall largely silent. In fact, the closest I encountered while pursuing my doctorate in the history and critical theory of religion at Vanderbilt, was the phrase “an overplus of meaning,” used by some visionary philosophers to give a name to that which can not be otherwise explained away by logic or the senses.

Taking my scholar’s hat off, I will try to put into words the depth of the shift that has allowed so many of us — has allowed me — to face all manner of loss, challenge and change, even during the holidays when poignancy is so easily amplified by the heightened emotion, expectations and memories of the season.

The fact is that I am not alone in discovering that we are not rubber bands snapping back into shape. Rather, there are many of us who have now had the experience of allowing the things that happen to us change us at the deepest levels, not to return to how we were before — but to transform us into more of who we really are. We have had the experience of falling into the embrace of a loving universe, usually when we least expect it. Suddenly, we are infused with the knowledge that whatever the externals with which we’re dealing, when it comes to what really matters, it’s really, truly going to be okay.

The instigation of transformation may begin as nothing more than the yearning for this place where we will be whole again, where there will be meaning yet to emerge from what is happening. But here’s the hard part. We can not “make” transformation happen. All we can do is enter into the ritual passage, creating the context in which transformation is most likely to occur. In fact, we most often find ourselves having to begin and continue this journey through liminal space before there is any empirical, external evidence to support our faith. Before and more to the point irregardless of the favorable diagnosis, before the reconciliation, before the long-awaited phone call, before the gift you really wanted arrives, before the time comes around for a holiday spent with the grandchild, before the new job.

Happily, this is enough, for I’ve learned one final lesson about giving up control. While it’s true that you can’t always stop painful things from happening, you can’t always stop unfounded joy, either. And along with eggnog, apple cider, and the glow of the holidays, be it from candles, Christmas tree lights or the video chat computer screen with loved ones far away, this is a thought that we can depend upon ultimately to fill us with the true spirit of the season.

And so, fellow citizens of Vibrant Nation, a Merry Resilience to you. And remember, whether you’re celebrating the holidays, or transiting through liminal space, we’ll always leave the porch light on for you.