During the last four years of majoring in Psychology, I have had to learn and memorize a lot of vocabulary. One of my favorite terms that I got to learn was “Resilience.”

Resilience in the world of psychology is the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back. However, I have learned that resilience is more complex and more personal than simply bouncing back from adversity. 

When we are faced with pain and adversity, there isn’t a trampoline that is going to be there when we fall that will allow us to bounce back. Adversity can also be personal to many people; one small obstacle for a person can be a heavy burden for another. 

Therefore, although I believe in the importance of resilience, I think it goes beyond the ability to bounce back when faced with adversity. 

Life can be so fucking hard and so fucking beautiful all at once. This is why being resilient is important, but it takes time to be resilient; it goes beyond bouncing back from something or overcoming something. I think that resilience is like Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No.2.” It evokes a lot of emotions in a person; it feels heavy, and it feels light, similarly to being alive. 

I have seen a lot of articles and studies that tell people to be resilient in five simple steps and that there are five principles in the journey of being resilient: gratitude, compassion, acceptance, meaning, and forgiveness. 

Personally, I find it hard to believe that in order to be resilient these principles should be part of our lives. I see how they make sense to an extent, but at the same time, people can’t be expected to live by those principles in order to overcome something. 

I think that people can be resilient and overcome things while being able to accept something or to forgive. Resilience is something personal; it is something that we can find and strengthen at our own pace and with our own principles.   

I wish I could tell people how to be resilient; I wish I could tell myself how to be resilient, but I don’t think I can because life impacts people in different ways. We learn to be resilient through different experiences and different methods. Sometimes, we spend  more time falling than bouncing back. Other times, the falling takes a moment, and then bouncing back takes an eternity. 

At the end of the day, resilience is simply something that lets us know that we are alive. Something that might not let me know where I’m going, but I hope I get there.