Resilience vs Resistance

I’m not sure what’s happening. It’s not just happening to me, but to others around me. Relationships are ending. Not that I know too many details about the people around me I’m referring to, but there seems to be a pattern. In these relationships, one party is Resilient and the other is Resistant. Clearly I won’t be sharing examples from my friends’ breakups, or mine, but the fascinating nature of this synchronistic time has me compelled to analyze.

How is it that a resilient person ends up in a relationship with a resistant person? I’m such a firm believer you should be in a relationship with someone LIKE YOU, and although  all of “us” (those I know who are Resilient and going through a break up) thought we were getting into relationships with people we believed we had things in common with. It turns out that there is this fundamental difference of whether or not a person can bounce back, bend, extend, grow or plants their feet in the ground and refuses to move.

I have to get clearer. I feel like I’m skimming the surface.

Life is fucking hard. Most of us go through a bunch of shit. Some have to experience shit that others will never know. This journey of body, mind, heart is no smooth sail.

Furthering this point, there are two kinds of people seeing life is hard. Those who wish for smooth sailing despite the shit, and those who don’t believe smooth sailing exists. Those of us who wish for it know that the only way to ever get it is to turn ourselves into a sailboat. Our Resilience keeps us flexible in our attempt to continually try and figure out how we become this boat that will one day finally sail smoothly.

The Resistant ones refuse to believe that working on themselves to be come a sailboat is eve possible. They act like it’s and urban legend while watching the resilient ones flourish. And they do it WHILE trying to explain away why what they are doing in their resistant state (not working on themselves) is serving them just fine. What’s almost crazy about his thinking is that they are standing RIGHT THERE experiencing no change, no growth, and the relationship being destroyed because of this opposition of Resilience and Resistance.

As a resilient one I don’t get it. Life isn’t easier when you won’t work on yourself and your past. We all have “issues” and ignoring them makes life HARDER. Why would I want this hard life to be harder? I am not a reveler in misery –I want happiness, I want comfort, I want love, I want peace of mind, I want self esteem, and I want to be an incredible sailboat.

What will I be using to build this boat? All things flexible. An open mind, the ability to heal, the humility to say I’m wrong, the ability to put the drill in reverse and remove the rusty screws I’ve hung onto for too long. They will not serve me as I get stronger.

Where do I find a resilient one like me? How do I know sooner who the resistant ones are? The closest resilient friends also going through breakups need this question answered too. I’m not sure. Maybe we need a Resilient quiz.

And it’s only now that my mind begins to wonder if the resistant ones will ever figure out that working on themselves and being resilient is the key to it all. Was I once resistant? Have I always been resilient? I am not sure. Seems so, for the most part.

I fall, I break, I collapse, I melt. That’s life. But it’s because I’m resilient that I get up, I heal, I rehydrate, and I put myself back together. Giving up and becoming a resistant one who does “status quo” is not how I reach “smooth sailing”. In fact this time around my boat is so well constructed and flexible, I survived this storm pretty good. I don’t have more repairs than I can handle, and that’s thanks to the greatness of my boat thus far.