On Resilience

terrible event occurred last month – our dogs of eight years went missing. What amazed me was my youngest daughter’s reaction, who loves them a lot, but as we always say is too young to understand to get upset. However, what made me pause is this very same statement: we always say kids are too young to understand to get upset when tragic events occur, but what struck me was the realisation that she fully understands but it’s her resilience that made her move past it.

At such a young age she hasn’t learnt to dramatize every event in her life, her hormones haven’t taken over to make her overreact, and most importantly, she lives in the moment – they were here and now they’re gone. For all she knows, in the next moment or several moments later they could be back. But, she’s not living in those moments, or the ones that passed – it’s only this second that she lives in.

She didn’t internalise the event, which would’ve brought about the sadness, simply because they could come back. Her hope and her ability to live in the moment made her resilient, not that she doesn’t understand, because she very much does. For example, she understands when someone takes something from her, and she wails at that sort of event because she knows that she could do something about it and get back her toy by crying. That’s the difference: moving on when there is nothing in your hand to do – that’s resilience.

I then remembered another situation that happened when my little sister was seven years old – our father passed away. She didn’t spiral as some adults do, she simply held him in her heart and moved on, not out of not understanding because she understood what death meant, but out of her innate resilience – knowing that he’s gone and that there was nothing to do about it right now. She stayed in the moment and didn’t let the past or the future dictate her present. Don’t get me wrong, it’s of course natural to get sad, but this child-like resilience means that you don’t let the sadness take over.

Our children really do teach us plenty, and many a sage preaches of getting back to our inner-child strength and positivity, and this resilience and ability to live in the moment are definitely of the most important traits we should get back to, or develop, for peace of mind and lasting happiness.