Jargogled Impressions.

We come across so many setbacks in life. Everyone does. How we deal with it is up to us, and if we condition ourselves, we could take it all in our stride. Getting better at dealing with whatever stuff life throws at us is a key ingredient of a vitalized, purposeful life.

Chronic illnesses, disability, genetic disorders, accidents, ADHD, cognitive decline, depression, financial setbacks, relationship problems, existential crisis, repression, discrimination. The list of setbacks we can encounter that can significantly alter our life is infinite. Life can change dramatically in an instant when this happens, and its remarkable how us humans can adjust to the new reality and make it the default normal. Time is the ultimate healer, they say. To me, what it means is that with time we learn to navigate the setback and everything it encompasses. We can rely on time to address the cognitive burden we feel when we are just beginning on this journey. But time alone cannot aid in taking the actions we need to take. It can serve as a balm for the restless and anxious mind, and in doing so, it can free up our resources to focus on the tactical, the practical, the strategic, and the emotional resources that needs to be hailed in order to effectively absorb the setback in question.

Human beings typically also tap into the cosmic, the transcendental, the theocratic structures to embolden the reliving aspects of time. Time isn’t something we can speed up through sheer willpower. And so, it befalls on these structures we have made through the ages to give us the strength we need, to call for the resilience that is required, and to manage our emotions in the face of a tragedy or a difficult situation.

We often also rely on sustained momentum, activist passion, singular goalsetting, and stubborn attachment to calm our restlessness that inevitably arises out of the dilemma. Responding to adversarial events comes naturally to human beings by way of applying their industriousness, their thinking prowess, and tapping into their social cohesiveness. It’s as much a diversion as it is a tool for responding to the events and the cascading moments that surfaces on account of it.

I have seen grit in many forms. Grit and resilience go hand in hand. However, grit is taking action (offense) while resilience is standing tall and strong (defense). Both are critical if we are to build an immune system against the setbacks that life throws our way. Being able to detect, triage, plan, and act on these foreign, adversarial events is the conditioning we build more and more as we add another year to our time here on earth. Experience is a good teacher, maybe the best of the teachers.

And yet, we cannot rely on experience alone in many cases to light our path ahead. We need to build a sort of what the economist/author/shit-poster Nasim Nicholas Taleb calls “anti-fragile” stance against the onslaught of these setbacks. Being anti-fragile is a state of being as much as it is an emotional stance. We get stronger as a result and slightly more ready to take on the next challenge. It’s a hard life though, no doubt. But when bad things happen to you which is not something you can control, the best strategy is to prepare for the worst. An army that has not fought any wars is at a big disadvantage and liable to lose, no matter how big when pitted against a foe that has experience fighting wars, no matter how small or localized the war may be. Does not mean that we need to manufacture adversity for the sake of it. Adversity isn’t the price of adversity as Noah Smith says in his blog.  But when we encounter one, we can and must strive to further harden our shield. In many ways, this focus on developing anti-fragility can serve as an antidote to the helplessness that can set in when dealing with incessant setbacks.

David Goggins in the Huberman Podcast mentions the need to put in the work, the hard work, to challenge the negative self-talk that can often result when met with a difficult fork in the road. This hard work is the work towards building the inner strength needed to develop anti-fragility. And it requires a concentrated and disciplined effort at taking action and showing up to take action and then showing up again despite being struck down repeatedly.

“Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving.” – Paul Kalanithi in When Breath Becomes Air.

Striving constantly to better ourselves and our condition is our defining characteristic. Stasis is lethal. It’s contagious too. We strive and goad others to strive forward and derive meaning from it. Life’s absurdities become a trifling affair when we have much to get done. In the busyness we synthesize amidst this striving, in the constant yearn for action and momentum, we can and must create the conditions necessary for us to thrive. Setbacks aren’t eliminated as much as dissolved in the din of our actions.

A trite dialogue comes to mind: “Why do we fall Bruce? So, we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

“Life wasn’t about avoiding suffering” – Paul Kalanithi in When Breath Becomes Air.

Life is, instead, about embracing suffering and letting it be an integral part of who we are but not reveling in it so much as to make it our identity and our pride. When we suffer with an open heart, we are accepting that it’s in our capacity to choose how to respond to things that happen to us and we are not as helpless as it would imply.

The challenges we meet along the way of this “brief flash of lighting in the dark of night” cannot beat us when they are in fact a part of us. Accepting that saves us from suffering in vain.