Modern Resilience: An Unbending Tree Is Easily Broken, but a Bending Tree Isn’t Always Safe Either

Last week, I received a call from a journalist who was writing a story about resilience. As is so often the case these days, she was writing in the context of COVID-19; but, she seemed to be thinking about the topic more broadly. I told her that I have come to think of the resilience of individuals and organizations not so much in terms of being strong enough to withstand and recover from adverse conditions, but more in terms of being flexible and adaptive enough to do so. I cited one of my favorite learnings from the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu: an unbending tree is easily broken. I also talked about the Stockdale Paradox, which I wrote about at the peak of the pandemic, and the work of Martin Reeves, which I shared with my company last fall. (Mr. Reeves has written about six key principles embraced by resilient companies: redundancy, diversity, modularity, adaptability, prudence, and embeddedness.)  I even talked about my own personal experience living with a brain tumor.

Then, only 12 hours after my interview, my son’s girlfriend called my wife and me late at night to tell us that our 23-year-old son was on his way to the emergency room with shooting pain in his shoulder, jaw, back, and left arm. That kind of pain can mean different things for different people, but our son is not your typical 23-year-old, at least not from a health perspective. He has congenital heart disease, and he had just had his third open-heart surgery less than three months ago.

At about 3:00 the next morning, we learned that our son had an aneurysm in his aorta, possibly caused by an infection, and that an emergency open-heart surgery was imminent. The next day, completely sleep-deprived, we were on our way to Chicago, where our son lives, to be with him for his fourth open-heart surgery and second in under three months.

As I write this, he’s now recovering from that surgery, which we think went well, and we are again hopeful that he will recover and go on living his best possible life. When he eventually is released from the hospital, he will need to remain on an intravenous antibiotic cocktail for six weeks, and he will need to be followed closely, but we are optimistic. He will also need to take a leave of absence from school, but, for us, everything else seems so small relative to his health.

Unbelievably, my son has remained brave, confident, and fully resilient every step of the way. And that brings me back to this concept of resilience. Just a few hours after my interview, my perspective has expanded, and I have gained greater clarity. During my son’s prior surgery, I asked for everyone's thoughts and prayers and noted that the sometimes maligned cliché was actually much more than a cliché for those in need.

But I now realize that I was only scratching the surface (sorry for another cliché) when I made that plea. What I’ve come to realize is that resilience starts with flexibility and adaptability but that the kind of resilience exhibited by my son is powered by something more. That “something” includes the thoughts and prayers of friends, family, and strangers, but it also includes the broad, diverse support of an entire community.

It’s more than thoughts and prayers that have sustained my son. He has been supported not by one but by two medical communities – one in Chicago and one in Boston, where he had his prior surgeries. His friends (especially his girlfriend) and family have been there for him every day and at all hours. Our temple has supported him. His school has supported him. His mentors and teachers have supported him. And my wonderful colleagues and friends at work have supported him too.

In this way, I’ve noticed how deeply my son is embedded in his, and our, communities. When Martin Reeves speaks about the attribute of “embeddedness,” what he is talking about is that resilient businesses recognize and account for the fact that they are part of an entire business ecosystem that includes their customers, suppliers, advisors, business partners, competitors, and even regulators. It’s the same for each of us each individually. We, too, are part of an ecosystem, and our resilience is maximized only by understanding that fact.

I would not presume to suggest an improvement to the wisdom of the enduring master philosopher Lao Tzu. Instead, I will suggest that Lao Tzu might have chosen a tree for his metaphor for a specific reason. True, an unbending tree is easily broken, but even the most flexible tree must be firmly rooted in its surrounding soil, or it will just as easily be swept away by the very wind that otherwise would break it. My son’s resilience starts with his ability to snap back from these great health challenges, but its incomparable power lies in his ability to harness the power of the broad and deep community that supports him. Like the soil surrounding Lao Tzu’s tree, this community nourishes him, and it holds his roots in place despite the best efforts of the heart-disease tempest to uproot him.

The same can be said for all of us. We can be resilient on our own if we are able and willing to be yielding, flexible, and adaptive. We can be most resilient, however, only when we seek and receive the full support of a broad and deep community.

I think about people who have been less fortunate than my son and find myself wondering. Did they have the same support that my son has had? Were they bending trees that got swept away not because they were unbending but because the soil around them was just too dry and too loose? It’s time that we all recognize that resiliency is not exclusively an individual trait. It’s a community trait too, and we are all interdependent, with each of us having an important part to play as members of that community.