Resilience when Working for Change

by Miki Kashtan

I have often wondered why it is that there is so much strife and conflict in so many of the communities and movements I know of. This has been especially challenging to grasp when the groups I am talking about are generally committed to a vision of a peaceful world and the individuals in them aspire to personal integrity and compassion in their relationships.

I am very well aware I am not the only one wondering about this, and many have had things to say about it already. Some think of it as inevitable, part of human nature. Some think of communities as going through pre-determined phases. I find my heart sinking at these thoughts, because of my own deep sense of human dignity, and because I have so much faith in our capacity to transcend any static notion of who we are or how things must unfold.

Some others invoke centuries or millennia of practices of domination which have been passed from generation to generation through our education, through wars, through our governance and economic systems, and through the stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be human and how things should be. In this view, each of us is brought into this world and becomes part of these dynamics regardless of what, if anything, is our essential human nature. Tragic as this view is, I find it more palatable, more consistent with my own heart longings, because it leaves room for the possibility both that as individuals we can overcome our personal habits, and that as a species we might learn collectively how to create new systems, structures, and practices that will support us in interdependently engaging with others to create a world that works for all of us and the rest of the natural world.

Why We Want to Create Change
I don’t know why it took me so many years to ask the simple question I discovered today: why it is that any of us would work for change - either as personal growth or as our contribution to social transformation. Since I think of most everything through the lens of human needs, a part of the answer became immediately obvious to me: we work for change because our needs, on balance, are not met in how the world operates or in how our individual lives unfold. Anyone whose needs are mostly met is less likely to want to create change.

With this clarity came another: if our needs, on balance, are not met, that’s likely to mean that we have less resilience. Resilience, in the online English learners’ dictionary, is defined as “the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.” As a colleague once remarked, when our needs are often not met, any one experience of unmet needs can become unbearable, whereas if our needs are overall met, any one experience of unmet needs is much less significant.

The implication of this simple insight were unsettling. Could it really be that those of us who work for change are, in some ways at least, less resilient because our needs are less often met? If so, wouldn’t that be a reason why more things would appear to us as attacks, people slacking off, or the like; why more of the time we would feel afraid to say what’s on our mind because the weight of potentially not being received can be more debilitating; or why we would get angry easily when conflicts arise?

Young Haitian Soccer Players after Earthquake

Sources of Resilience
If, indeed, our lack of individual resilience is a contributing factor to the many challenges of working with others and trying to collaborate, then if we want to work for change we need to find sources of strength, activities, relationships, or other strategies that nourish our sense of well-being so that we can face situations with more presence. The possibilities are almost endless, and I would love to see a focused discussion in many circles about what can add to our resilience. To get started, here are some sources of resilience that I know have worked for me and others.

Solidarity: The experience of being in community with others who are experiencing the same hardship can be a source of immense support. Bell Hooks, among others, describes how segregation in many ways helped African Americans develop pride and resilience, because they developed an entire parallel society with many successful role models of business people, teachers etc., while integration has sapped both for many. Much would need to be explored about what conditions make this kind of togetherness supportive, and when the very issues of strife and conflict can interfere with the added resilience.

Gratitude: I have already written about how a practice of gratitude can provide immense fuel for life. After a year of consistent and daily gratitude practice, I find that I can now have immediate access to gratitude even in tough moments, and literally feel the increased resilience that arises spontaneously from tapping into gratitude.

Faith: As someone who lives without a god or higher power of any kind, I am well aware that people of faith often have much more capacity to withstand challenges and difficulties. God, or any other source of faith, is something to lean on, some profound heart assurance that a force exists that will bring about a longed-for outcome. For just one example, I imagine that for Martin Luther King, Jr. to say that the arc of history bends towards justice required faith. In the absence of a transcendent source of faith, my own relies on human dignity, on our ability to transcend circumstances, on the grandeur of our spirit. I aim to cultivate and deepen my faith, so I can lean on it more in times of great challenge, especially when I feel helpless and in despair in the face of the immensity of human cruelty or lack of care that I so often perceive in the world.

Spiritual Practice: If conflict involves temporary or longer-term loss of empathy, compassion, generosity, or care for self or others, this means that those capacities get most “tested” in those times when others (or ourselves in many cases) act in ways that don’t work for us. This has led me to recognize that we can increase our resilience by embracing a consistent spiritual practice that strengthens our ability to withstand unmet needs, so can access choice in how to respond to those difficult moments.

Vision: I wish so much that we lived, already, in the world of my dreams, a world without coercion, based on willingness and generosity, trust and sufficiency; where enough needs are met for everyone that violence becomes a thing of the past. For now, that vision in itself becomes a source of strength for me. I have found, repeatedly, that clarity of vision sustains my energy even in difficult circumstances. As I am reminded of possibility, my passion rekindles, and I find more capacity to accept the obstacles along the way.