POV: Lessons in Resilience (Rory Delargy)

In our new DAILY column POV – Rory Delargy on resilience in life….

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My two boys are very similar in many ways, but in personality obviously different. Felix reminds very much of myself at his age – he rolls with the punches, sees himself as the class joker (they’re both still in primary school) and understands that some days are more challenging than others. Charlie is more affected by individual moments and is much more self-critical. He really wants to do well, whether that be in the classroom or on the football pitch, but he feels the pain of failure much more keenly than his brother, at one point making a collection of “worst days ever” when everything seemed stacked against him and his pursuit of happiness.

My boys go to an excellent school, and there is a strong emphasis on helping the boys and girls to develop mental and emotional strength as well as getting book-smart, and emotional literacy is as important as the ability to read fluently. This is all good, and it makes the children ask philosophical questions about themselves and the world they live in. It also makes me think about how the boys reflect my own personality and whether I should be learning as much from them as I expect them to do from me.

Resilience is a key word for kids today, and we’d generally like to think of ourselves as resilient having had chapters of life experience to work from. In that respect, I tend to see myself in my older son, whose attitude to life is not to take it too seriously, but while a good night’s sleep always allowed me to put the disappointments of yesterday to one side, I see that this facile shrugging aside of worries – while fundamentally positive – has a downside. Neither Felix nor I tend to think too much about what went against us in the past as long as we can clean the slate on a new day, but neither do either of us think much about why something did go wrong and whether there is a specific lesson to be learnt.

Charlie is more likely to be discouraged by events, either through negative experience or worry that things won’t work out, and that can lead to anxiety down the line. On the other hand, he always knows exactly why he feels the way he does and needs to come to terms with it before he can move on. He won’t be jollied along or easily cheered up, which can be annoying for a selfish parent, but these days he’s usually willing to accept a hug as long as the hug isn’t meant to represent a fix in itself. It allows him to talk about what is making him sad or angry and talking about it helps his process.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that Charlie’s method works better for him than mine does for me. He has always known how he feels and why he feels that way, and while I (and Felix) are able to put such feelings aside easily, Charlie is fixing himself from the ground up. When he finds solutions, he understands why they work, and that largely means coming to terms with individual setbacks and realising you aren’t defined by them. That doesn’t mean they don’t affect you, but their effect is passing, and largely arbitrary. It takes mental fortitude to overcome the upset and move on, but I genuinely admire that quality in him. Felix and I remain vulnerable to the occasional meltdown – he will often remember incidents where he felt wronged months and even years afterwards, for example, but while Charlie is more aware of life’s slings and arrows as he feels their blows, when he does move on, he does so genuinely unencumbered by the past.

It doesn’t matter if you’re 9, 11 or 53 – every day will present a challenge and those of us at the higher end of that scale have found our ways of meeting difficulties, problems and disappointments. For the majority of the time we can learn from our own previous experience and/or the wisdom of others, but sometimes it’s those tackling life’s vicissitudes for the first time who teach us what we need to know; it’s important to let them do the talking sometimes.

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