Resilience

I sit here tonight waiting for the 2008 Presidential Election results to start being announced. I know one thing. Tomorrow there will be a lot of disappointed people. Only one candidate can win and the supporters of the loser will have to cope with that fact.

What will the losing party do? What it always does, starts the next campaign. Let me be the first to welcome you to the 2012 Race for the White House.

When my candidate lost the first election I voted in I was crushed. I have always taken these things very seriously. My parents were active in local politics and I learned a lot about the political process in my childhood. For instance, I learned that it was hard to get a hot meal at our house on election day because the kitchen table was filled with charts of all the registered voters in the district and my parents were very busy getting their constituents to the polls. I also learned that you sometimes lose even when you are on the side of the angels. And I learned that next year my parents would be at it again because if you want to do good you have to be resilient.

Author Diane Coutu did a review of research on resilience for the Harvard Business Review in her article, “How Resilience Works.” She said there were three common characteristics of the resilient.

A staunch acceptance of reality

Resilient people are not overly optimistic, they see things as the really are, good and bad. You can’t bounce back and make things better unless you have a true and clear understanding of the problems. Happy thoughts may make us feel better, but they don’t make things better. Know your enemy, the good and the bad. “The truth is out there.” But the truth is not easy to find, you must look hard and be objective.

A sense that life is meaningful

Victor Frankl was a World War II concentration camp survivor who went on to be a famous psychiatrist. He believed that those who survived the camps found a way to make some meaning from the horror about them. He personally imagined that in the future he would lecture on the psychology of the concentration camps, as he did after he wrote his famous book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He was able to create goals and make decisions in an environment where he had almost no choices or power. Still, he was able to chose his reactions to this environment, aided by a strong preexisting values system.

An ability to improvise.

As a musician, I am familiar with improvisation. Being creative on the spot, under pressure, is exhilarating and terrifying. But improvisation does not mean lack of preparation. Improvisation can be learned, it involves constantly collecting and practicing the musical elements that go into a performance, scales, intervals, chords, and melodic fragments. When a musician can call them up almost without effort then creativity can take over. Frankl writes of prisoners who would collect any little piece of wire or string they could find, never knowing when they might mean the difference between life and death. Collect ideas, opinions and options, make up your own, write them down, save them, put them in a blog. You never know when you will need them, but someday you will. “Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.” How do you get to improvise at Carnegie Hall? Practice.

Resilience. A staunch acceptance of reality, a sense that life is meaningful, an ability to improvise.

Got it.

OK, I guess I’ll turn on the news and find out who won.