Resilience or Grit?
I took my grand daughter to see Lion King on Broadway. Her other grandmother is visiting, so she and my daughter joined us. We started early on Saturday, catching a train, which is always exciting when you’re five. In NJ, Amtrak lost power and we sat for an hour and a half on the track with no ETA. I got on my phone and tried to get tickets to the evening show (our show time was 2pm), and when there were no tickets, I tried Sunday, and when that didn’t work, I called the theatre to see about a refund. They said no. So I looked for an Uber. We could get off the train and get a ride, albeit a pricey one, and just make it. None of the Ubers in that area offered a car seat, which you have to have until the age of 8. As I looked for bus info, the train started moving. Not sure if we would have time to check into our hotel first, I contacted the theater to see if we could leave our one suitcase in coat check. They said no. Our hotel was literally across the street, so we sprinted from the station to the hotel (15 minutes), asked the concierge if he would just check our bag, which he did, ran across the street, and got to our seats in time for curtain call.
It was an adventure.
Here’s how it’s relevant, other than the catharsis of telling you about it: I have a lot of practice in problem solving travel issues. I prepare before, and when things go wrong, I know of numerous avenues available to go around them. When those don’t work, I go to Google. If that doesn’t work, I find someone to ask for help. For instance, if all of that hadn’t worked and we’d missed the play, I had already researched and found an appeal policy and got the info I needed from Amtrak to get my money back later. That’s grit with a little bit of resilience.
If you’ve never read Angela Duckworth’s research on grit, I recommend it. Especially if you’re working with youth or justice involved folks first coming home. Grit is about practice. It can be learned, and if it can be learned, it can be taught. We should be teaching daily survival skills like problem solving along with technical and academic skills. It’s important to let people know, upfront, that plans will go awry and that’s normal. Navigating them is the good stuff. First try this, then that, look for answers, ask for help. No need to unravel or get angry. There’s a solution. Just gotta find it.
When I told my five year old baby that we might not make it to the show, she looked like she might cry. Then she smiled and said, “I guess we’ll just have to find other fun stuff to do. Like go to the Disney Store.”
That, folks, is resilience. And maybe a little manipulation. But she’s so dang cute.
Cheerio and happy beverage sipping to you!
