It is of no value to life, as I see it, to be a robust child. It holds back the development of the most important skills of handling real life, of living and learning with life, of engaging and sharing, and moving on.
Risktaking with a purpose
“Indeed, the political discourse is lacking a concept. Politicians in their speeches, goals, and promises aimed at the timid concepts of “resilience,” “solidity,” not antifragility, and in the process are stifling the mechanisms of growth and evolution. We didn’t get where we are thanks to the sissy notion of resilience. And, what’s worse, we didn’t get where we are today thanks to policymakers—but thanks to the appetite for risks and errors of a certain class of people we need to encourage, protect, and respect.” (from “Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb)
It is not just politicians who focus on the concept of resilience. I hear it a lot, from the critique of our lifestyle – We are full-time travelers, who enjoy the tiny house living in a home on wheels and our kids are unschooled. People ask us: “Will the children become robust, will they have resilience?”
The thing is.
No.
They will not.
And they will never need it.
To be robust is to be stubborn, to be robust as a child is to avoid the process of handling emotion. I don’t even want to be robust myself. To stay with my own system no matter what. I want to be connected, I want to learn, I want to adapt, I want to engage, I want to grow. If it hurts, I want to feel it, if it is scary I want to feel afraid.
It is of no value to life, as I see it, to be a robust child. It holds back the development of the most important skills of handling real life, of living and learning with life, of engaging and sharing, and moving on.
I am reading this book and I just love it, Antifragile. It is a perfect concept. This is how we are strong: Risktakers, awake and alive, ready for mistakes and trouble, ready to learn and grow, ready for what we could not even have thought about.
Sometimes we aren’t ready, actually. When life strikes with something horrible, something unforeseen, something wild, we are never ready. The right word is willing. Mistakes are not failures, hard life events are not the end of the world. Mistakes are the landmarks of learning, corners we turn in order to grow, hard and harsh life events challenges we are willing to accept.
This is how we grow, flow with life, learn, stay open and focused.
PS. Nothing bad happened. Just wanted to share my point of view inspired by this great book – Go read it 🙂
May the sun shine on you.
Cecilie Conrad
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