On Resilience

I typically wrote a new blog post every fifteen or so days while I traveled outside of the U.S.A.

And, although I knew it at the time, it has grown abundantly clear to me now, in hindsight, that I never wrote this blog for anyone but myself. (Sorry, Mom.)

Even those posts, the one’s that radiated ache, the one’s that lamented the tragedy of my leaving – beautiful places and beautiful people – those words were never for anyone but me.

To compartmentalize and coalesce my grief.

(A special thanks to Sophia, another Watson Fellow, the one I’m living with <3, for getting me to think about coalescing.)

I only wrote about Schiphol (Amsterdam’s International Airport) and the blooming purple (the November jacarandas in Argentina) because my soul needed some form of external validation – some evidence that I had been there, loved there, flourished there – something more than just a smeared stamp in my passport.

Now that I am back stateside, I have struggled to decide whether or not I wanted to keep this blog up and running. I think the cynical side of me (the side of me I like the least) told me, and I quote, “…nobody gives a flying fuck.” And, “It will be too painful to write in the States, there is nothing novel or worthwhile about suburban Ohio.”

But, the side of me (the side I like the most) that does things purely because they are whimsical, decided to continue writing because my Watson Year has not ended but merely taken a new form. And, I desire to remember these days of monotony and the mundane just as much as I desire to remember those days of novelty and newness.

I flew from Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia to Taipei, Taiwan, to Los Angeles, California, to Cleveland, Ohio in a grand world tour that took more than two days.

I have been living in rural-ish Ohio for a little under a month. And, this ultra-suburban lifestyle, amidst the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus, has forced me to think a lot about my Watson year in terms of words. The most important and poignant word right now being: “Resilience.”

The million-dollar word (after “hope”) in suicidology and suicide prevention.

Indeed, when I was living in New Zealand, this word rattled around a lot. Many folx attribute the country’s high youth suicide rate to a lack of resilience.

“The youth,” they say “nowadays…” “… they aren’t as resilient as my generation was.”

“It’s all social media and emotions with them.”

“They don’t know how to fix anything with a number eight wire.”

The above saying is a ‘Kiwism,’ much like the Uncle Sam’s favorite saying in the States, i.e, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Both sayings imply that the youth of today lack the tenacity, ambition, and gumption to traverse adversity and move forward, undaunted, in their lives with ingenuity and wit.

However, I reckon that both ‘isms’ overlook/do not consider that, perhaps, the youth were never given a number eight wire, to begin with – that they never had that special-brand-of-boots-to-pull-themselves-up-with – that when we feel emotionally overwhelmed – we lack the necessary resources to resolve the issue(s) alone. I mean, can you blame us for our lack of resources?

The discussion concerning both resilience and resources grows in importance when we take a moral inventory of the world during the pandemic.

Now, I am no authority on the global pandemic…nor am I really an authority on anything, yet.

But, I will put down some of the thoughts I’ve had concerning Trump’s statement (aired on the ever-well-regarded ‘Fox and Friends’) that: “suicides will increase by the thousands if the economy stays closed.”

A Chicago Tribune columnist, Dahleen Glanton, argued that this claim was a mark of Donald Trump’s class privilege:  

“We always knew that Donald Trump was out of touch with most Americans. The fact that he thinks we’re going to kill ourselves if the economy doesn’t improve soon shows how clueless he is about how resilient we are.

 Only someone of privilege could believe that being without money is worse than death. Obviously, he wasn’t referring to the people who live from paycheck to paycheck and are broke every other week.”

And yet, both of these takes seem to miss the nuance and precarity of unemployment and financial loss as it relates to our desire or will to stay alive to live. They ignore those who have suicided, who have hanged themselves in their closets, and shot themselves in empty fields, because of significant financial loss, debt, and unemployment.

We must ask ourselves why we privilege the mere sustenance and survival of biological life i.e., our lungs’ ability to contract and our hearts’ ability to pump blood, above our individual and collective ability to live – to love and be loved, to catch our breath, to do something more than merely survive.

I have no answer as to what makes life worth living (obviously, lol) but, we cannot speak about our bodies, our biological lives, without speaking to the machines, environments, and systems our bodies exist within.

Or, in other words, I know that the mere survival of our bodies is a precondition for our social and economic lives (the very same ones that Trump and Glanton speak to).

But, it seems to me that only speaking to and only valuing our biological life misses the tragedy of those who have killed themselves because they felt as though the (avoidable) loss of their social and economic life (or, their social death and economic death) rendered their perception of their biological life unworthy of sustaining.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this blog post is about resilience – and I would be remiss to ignore the global and local resilience that is has been and will continue to be demonstrated during this global crisis.

The grassroots organizing and the mutual aid are keeping people alive merely by letting others know that they have not been forgotten about  (!!) – and, that’s really all I have to say about that – it’s bad as fuck –  and I see you all supporting one another.

I guess, ultimately what I’m trying to say is that resilience is a value-laden word. And, we ought to define it for ourselves during tHeSE TrYiNG tIMeS.

Resilience for me looks like continuing my Watson domestically – diggin’ into youth suicide in Utah when I finally find my way to back Salt Lake.

It looks like setting aside my ego and remembering to prioritize my soul and its sustenance.

It looks like love.

What does resilience look like for you?

I started reading Infinite Jest again! All it took was a global pandemic!

If any of you who are reading this want to say a lil’ prayer on my behalf so that I might get my Ph.D. funded, I would be grateful.

Eat the Rich.

Free them All!

I Hate Snow 2020.

Got involved with a post-grad lab at the University of Massachusetts in Boston! Oh, yes. I’m moving to Boston in June.

New poems!

Capitalism is the virus. >:-(

Resist the urge to make it about you.

Everything happens to everyone.

My view outside of my Bali apartment.

Paradise in Ohio