Resilience: A Willingness to Be Silly Again

Even those of us lucky enough to have dodged the scourges of pandemic disease over the past few years remain afflicted by another “variant”—a longer-term shift in mindset from hapless change observers to passionate change participants.

No one I know of “asked for this role—but we’ll play it” (to paraphrase the misquote of Basil King, as Goethe, by “Elaine Miller” from the movie, “Almost Famous”). Once you embrace the discomfort, though, you may find a certain latent energy springing you forward after each minor act of mastery.

On Sunday, November 6, most clocks in the United States will “fall back” one hour for what may end up being the last instance of Daylight Savings Time.

Nine hours later, however, I plan on “springing forward” by running a 5K race: my 401st consecutive outdoor workout-day of 5K or more (includes both walks and runs).

Walking is something anyone of us can do (so, a low barrier to entry). Doing it for more than 13 months straight—under every type of weather scenario imaginable—is something almost none of us will do. Doing a streak that is more than 40 percent longer than the previously-considered-unreachable streak from nearly 20 years ago (April 24, 2002 to February 2, 2003) is even more rarefied air.

168 days after springing forward, I plan on running my sixth marathon in my fifth different decade (i.e., 1986 and 1989; 1998; 2009; 2011; and now 2023). Some might rightfully think this a fool’s errand or even shamefully sexy-genarian. And they may well be right!

But if the etymology of the word “resilience” tells us anything, it is this willingness to be wrong while pursuing the process or routine, while placing one’s trust in delayed-gratification or “marshmallow-test” grit-instincts (i.e., often defying conventional logic) to ultimately persevere in the outcomes or end results.

In other words, even moonshots with so-called “shortcomings” will still help propel you out of your gravitational pull or ordinariness-orbits toward something more closely resembling greatness.

The most poignant deathbed regret-confessions are simply not worth the “today” price of stagnation. We cannot control time or even nature, but we can exert influence over the “space” we occupy at any given moment.