II. Pros and cons of high resilience

What do you hear more often “Never give up, always keep trying” or “When you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to get off”? What is your own way to decide when the horse is really dead or you may probably try one more time? Where is the balance?

Cambridge dictionary defines “resilience” as — “the ability to be happy, successful, etc. again after something difficult or bad has happened” or “the ability of a substance to return to its usual shape after being bent, stretched, or pressed”

Before moving forward with the resilience let me tell you few stories.

It is not far from Irkutsk to Baikal, probably 60–70 km, and what local taxi drivers love to do while driving you between the city and the lake is to tell you endless stories about which plane crashed where in the vicinity. Indeed the landscape is very sophisticated here — the lake, mountains, heavy fogs and a special wind rose. To land at Irkutsk airport you need to pass by the city, cross the mountains get to the middle of Baikal lake, turn 180 degree while descending and then only land. One time I flew from Moscow, approached Irkutsk, went over Lake Baikal for landing and here the fog was just like milk. The pilot decided, well, it’s way too dangerous fog, so we kept going to the east and landed in Ulan-Ude in 200 km form Irkutsk to the East. The wind was strong, the landing was shaky and the wings almost touched the landing strip. It took few hours for fog to go out and only then we did all our way back to Irkutsk.

Baikal is a place of the force with the very special energy. You are standing by the lake and physically feel you stand on the edge of the abyss (indeed the lake is more than 1,6 km deep). Very special feeling. The flat surface of the lake is like a mirror and there is deep deep blue African sky above. Sunset. You feels the Lake is alive. Empty. Quiet.

On the shore of Lake Baikal there are few villages, a pier. On the pier there is a business happening — local women sells smoked Omul. I have not eaten ANYTHING more delicious NEVER. The fish is tender, it smells like lake, like river, like smoke — all together. Women are sitting in a row, they all have small smokehouses, fish are smoked on the grates. The smell of smoke, coals, smoked fish. Wind from the lake. Pines rustle. They also sell woolen mittens, socks, souvenirs, but most importantly Omul.

Everyone whom I met here has a dream — to go away one day, go from the lake to the ocean or at least to the sea. And instead of sailing the Lake to sail the ocean. Every summer season they try to earn and save money for their dream, every winter they drink away their savings.

We are walking along the shore with Sasha — this is the captain’s mate, the one who dreams of leaving for Novorossiysk to the “real sea”, Black sea. The slope goes down steeply, all in yellow colors (it’s autumn). There is a smell of grass and honey. We are going up and up climbing to the hill. Lake splashes far below, far away from us.

Sasha is saying:

it’s deep here, divers come here to dive from all over Russia. Yet it’s very dangerous, treacherous currents

I keep silent in anticipation of some tragic story. The story follow

“My friend” — Sasha continuing — “was the diver, so he just died last year.”

I’m silent, with compassion I look at the blue abyss that swallowed Sasha’s friend, but I dare to ask how it all happened.

“Ahhh” — Sasha explains — “it happened last winter, on the New Year’s Eve, he and his friend were absolutely drunk, driving a car, there was a traffic police post ahead and they took a detour via Amur river, the ice was thin, it broke and they drowned with the car.”

Ironic story and tragic at the same time

We were taken by the small Sasha’s boat and he brought us to the beach. I left the crowd with the captain and Sasha just to walk around. We went up, climbing and getting to the abandoned railway. This is the old extension of Trans-Siberian Railway. It took a long time to build it. It took many lives to build it. Sasha and the captain are just walking along the tracks, and they are talking to each other as if I was not here at all.

…rails. Sasha, where did the rails came from? Let’s take a look at the print. Yeah. Demidov plant yet. Yeah from Zlatoust. And you see the year? Yeah, 1905. I see. They dismantled the other road and the rails here …

Here is the NKVD (was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union in 1930th) booth and a sign stating that the NKVD is building this road. We entering old tunnel and walking in a complete darkness. Creepy. The captain is lighting a flashlight. Finally the exit. We are reaching the destroyed barracks covered with the grass. Emptiness. Loneliness. The captain is saying

…the road was built for many years by prisoners, and those who died were thrown into Baikal, Baikal threw bones back, for many years. And now the whole coast is strewn with irregularly shaped pebbles, tubular so white-white.

I do not believe him. Emptiness. Loneliness. All the builders died. We are leaving the place.

The rail road was closed and abounded in the sixties, when an artificial lake was built on the Amur and part of the road was flooded. Another detour road been built. People hollowed tunnels in the rocks, laid sleepers, died. Now everything is empty and no one needs it. Weird feeling. We are coming back the same way. I’m along on the beach. Looking down at my feet. Under the feet is a layer of irregularly shaped white tubular stones. Crunchy. The whole beach. White. Whitewashed. It becomes uncomfortable.

The lake is alive indeed. It will never let Sasha to go away. He will stay here forever. He will keep doing the same things again and again. Sailing on Baikal every summer and keep drinking every winter. Again. No matter what. Dreaming of the sea and the ocean. Sweet dream. He will never give up dreaming, he will never give up doing his routine. Quintessence of resilience.

The second story is rather short. I met a MAN in Angola . Hindu Muslim. Born in Congo, then he lived in Brussels, New York, Canada, Hong Kong and finally (but who know, this “finally” may not be that “finally”) moved to Dubai. His business is in Angola. He is my Distributor in Angola. He has been doing his business mainly on the war. In a good way. He appeared where the war was, where everyone was afraid to go and sold people all kinds of sweets, shampoos, all that stuff. I learnt he was diagnosed with cancer five years ago. Doctors said there was no chance. But he got back to life a year later. He is saying that Allah gave a second life. He came to Angola to do his business in the country which is still suffering after the civil war. He is saying Europe is too well-fed, many things Europeans take for granted. Sometime very basic stuff like shampoo or diapers we in Europe perceived as a norm without thinking. Faizal wants to make sure people in Angola get the same as Europeans. He is my distributor. Enormous amount of energy. He says that he understands that he can die tomorrow and lives every day as his last day. The last time we talked for three hours… I feel like only the death can stop him from trying new things. He is failing and rising. Sort of personal resilience, no?

I was always puzzled and mystified by the mindset of resilience. In the essence the resilience pattern tells us: “never give up and you will win”. Indeed there are plenty of outstanding stories of the famous people we all learnt from. We all remember that J.K. Rowling’s pitch for “Harry Potter” was rejected 12 times, Stephen King got 30 rejections from publishers before his “Carrie” saw the reader. Even the famous now Dr. Seuss got 27 rejections from publishers at first, in fact, he had almost given up on writing altogether when he ran into an editor friend on the street, who asked to take a look — and the rest is history. From the business acumen of course we remember the famous Steve Jobs, who got literally fired from Apple but managed to returned back to the company as CEO, leading Apple to its greatest successes. In the show industry the famous Oprah Winfrey, before becoming the star of daytime TV was fired from her job as an evening news reporter at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV because she was “unfit for television news” and couldn’t sever her emotions from her stories. Many many stories are forming the pattern and the mindset of “proper resilience”. All the great stories and great people, no doubts. The question which keeps me worried — where are all of those thousands or even millions of people who were trying hard, never gave up and failed? Where is this writer who kept been rejected by publishers again and again 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times. Is success always coming to those who keeps trying? Probably not.

One of the stories happened with me some time ago was the story of “manager who never gave up”. He simply kept doing pretty much the same things with marginal changes. World was changing around, competitors were raising, the stock price of the Company was going down, Company was going through big troubles, but his motto was unchangeable — “never give up”. Didn’t end up well actually. Can we call it resilience? Does “resilience” means keep doing the same things again and again no matter what? Probably not really.

There is a famous quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.” This quote has been wrongly attributed to Benjamin Franklin as well as Albert Einstein but there’s no evidence either of them said it. But anyway, the quote is just great no matter who said it first. Of course while rolling dice we do it again and again and we expect to get “6” once. We get “1” and “1” again, then “3”, than “5” and “2” … and if we do not give up for quite a long time by chance we will get “6” one day. But this dice story is all about luck and the chance. It works well probably when you are trying to find a new job, or approaching a publisher with your book to be published. But even then probably if you got 1000 rejections of your CV you may think of changing it or change the profession. While getting 100 rejections from the publishers you may think of changing your script or simply give up and write a poem instead of prose.

Probably resilience it’s not about “given up” or “not given up”, but rather about trying few times, understanding quickly what is going wrong and start doing things differently. Shouldn’t we promote AGILITY instead of RESILIENCE? Agility is “the ability to move your body quickly and easily”, “the ability to think quickly and clearly”, “ways of planning and doing work in which it is understood that making changes as they are needed is an important part of the job”. Or probably we can find a balance in combining those two in a sort of RESILIAGILITY? RESILIAGILITY in essence may be “the ability to be happy again after something difficult or bad has happened AND to move quickly and easily making changes as they are needed”…

I have one more personal story about resilience and agility which had happen to me when I sill was a post-graduate student back in 90s. Alexander Alexeevich Vedenov was already in his 60s’ he was professor, Doctor of Physics and Math, Academician. I was assigned to help him in writing the Physics textbook. So during 1 year I was coming regularly to his house in the centre of Moscow and we used to spent few hours every week discussing the project and many things beyond. Apart of supporting my own studies, Vedenov to the very big extend formed me as a character, taught me self-respect, resilience and agility. His apartment was located at the beginning of Leninsky Prospect in Moscow. It was big flat with 4 or 5 rooms where he was living with his wife. One of the rooms was given over to library and the lab. Every time Vedenov met me with a contact exceptional level of energy and the awesome agility of the brain. Few things were very special — he tried to understand and learn everything. He never used any of Microsoft software program, he learnt how to code and had coded all the software needed text editor and an image editor using Assembler language — low-level programming language. His passion was 3d visuals and he developed a software to create green-red 3D visuals, was working on the theory of 3D, was thinking of 3D monitors and published few books on this topic. When we were working on project, he was of course the author, but we discussed every page every idea and he easily accepted what I was saying. We discussed theory, examples, problems and pictures in each chapter across all the parts of the Physics.

One of his quotes I still remember very well — “Pavel Alexandrovich, you must understand, even the weakest person always has a choice, and there are no weak people among us …”.

It was wild time in Russia when society was changing rapidly, governments were changing every few months and nouveau rich appeared as a mushrooms. Vedenov said once: “Several generations of my ancestors lived in Moscow, and now some people come and say that the country does not need science, but business is needed. It’s not they who should tell me what to do, I should tell them. This is not their country, but mine … “. It was a time of hyperinflation and once he told me in was winter with heavy snow and cold, his son was sick in the bed, he got a salary, looked at it, then went to the open market spent all his money to buy one single tomato for the son.

I was very lucky to get to know Vedenov, I started to appreciate every moment of life, value myself as a person, became more curios and no doubts much more agile and resilient.