Resilience - not safety

Anna Deavere Smith

Let's get this straight. Nobody is 100% safe. As I'm sitting here in my office at my computer, a helicopter could fall on the building and crush me. Sure, the probability is pretty low but it could happen. I could faint while driving and wreck the car. I could have a stroke with no warning. Some lunatic could burst in the building and shoot the place up. There is no such thing as complete security and our nation's leaders have no business encouraging us to expect that. This point was well made by Paul Campos in an article called "The politics of cowardice". Here's an excerpt:

At this moment Osama bin Laden must be howling with laughter. He's a man with no armies to command or weapons to brandish, except for the most powerful weapon of all: fear. More Americans drown in bathtubs every year than are killed by terrorists - and indeed we've now reached the point where bin Laden doesn't actually have to kill anyone to achieve his goal of promoting military conflict between the Islamic and Western worlds.

Bin Laden and his ilk are merely taking advantage of the politics of cowardice. For example, according to the statement President Bush made on the morning of last week's arrest of terrorist suspects in London, the goal of the war against "Islamic fascists" is to make Americans "completely safe."

That absurdities of this sort still play well in the polls is a sad comment on the state of the nation.

Sunday night I happened to watch the PBS program NOW. The guest being interviewed that evening was playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith whom I've long admired for her performance on The West Wing. I was fascinated by the whole program (which was about the role people in the arts can play when it comes to social commentary) but the point she made that really captured my attention was about the importance of resilience. We cannot be completely safe and neither should we try. Rather, it is more beneficial and skillful to cultivate the kind of interior resilience that will enable us to meet any occasion of adversity with creativity and equanimity.