Resilience Requires Transition (Itch #4)
I’ve been scratching an itch for many weeks now. It started with an “allergic reaction” last summer to some language people around me are using to compel climate action: “be a first responder.” I continue to write as a means to scratch this itch.
We are now handling several scales of emergency response: short-term sprint emergencies, like a house fire, and long-term, large-scale emergencies, like wildfire complexes that are the result of climate change. These scales of emergency demand that we be both responsive to short-term emergencies in the present and be proactive to mitigate the coming increase in emergencies on the ground. These are not the same kind of work. The training is different. The experience is different. The results are different.
The city-making exchange
Emergency response work at the scale of our planet is undeniable, and it is not “first responder” work. First responders perform specialized work in our communities with years of training and experience. They learn these skills on behalf of a whole community, and when an emergency arises, we call on them to exercise their specific abilities and knowledge that the rest of us don’t have.
First responders participate in the city-making exchange when they rescue us when we screw up, or our health goes sideways. In exchange, we grow their food, teach their children, make their emergency gear, make great movies for their entertainment, etc. They do work we do not do. We do work they do not do.
Community has three key roles to play in how we handle emergencies:
Prevent emergencies—when we are proactive and prevent the need for rescue.
Tell emergency responders when they are needed—when we use feedback systems, like calling 911.
Support emergency responders—when we get out of the way, provide sandwiches and water to them when they are in a marathon or ultramarathon event, pay taxes to fund their work and monitor the funding choices government makes.
Our most important work as the wider community is to prevent emergencies, to minimize our need to be rescued. The very need for first responders reveals a gap between our real-life capability to look after ourselves and our capacity to look after ourselves. The need for first responders and our need to be first responders—our reliance on rescue—creates the conditions for decline, not resilience.
“The need for first responders, and our need to be first responders—our reliance on rescue—creates the conditions for decline, not resilience.”
Our cities rely on the diversity of work we citizens perform. Our survival depends on sharing this work. For example, I rely on others to do my dentistry, teach chemistry to my children, grow a lot of my food, and when an emergency happens that is beyond my skills, I ask for help. Yes, there is a need for first responders to jump in and help when incidents occur. They offer vital work to our communities. My caution: do not confuse rescue with resilience.
The fourth role for community: transition
There are moments where prevention gives way, where we stop resisting changing and allow ourselves to renew ourselves. The work to regenerate ourselves is messy, often tumultuous, and belongs to community to do.
“There are moments when prevention gives way, when we stop resisting changing and allow ourselves to renew ourselves.”
Being rescued means I can avoid discomfort. Rescuing others means I can help others avoid discomfort, or my own discomfort with their discomfort. Rescue helps us avoid looking at the thresholds in our lives, as I describe in Nest City, and the choices we need to make:
I know I have reached a threshold, with a chasm in front of me, when I experience feelings of angst, uncertainty and discomfort, frustration, fear, unease, and even anger that signal that something is awry. I don’t need to see the chasm to know that it is there; I can feel it. These feelings tell me that I have a decision to make, whether or not I recognize it as such.
Rescue allows us to maintain the status quo and bypass transition to an improved way of thinking, making or doing. A vital fourth role for community to play in our resilience is to enable a transition from what’s not working to what could work better:
Enable transition—hold space for the shift from what was to what could be. We can not avoid disruption, nor do we want to, because it is an indication that there is a need for improvement, which means changing is underway. Community is responsible for resisting or inviting improvement and our emotional responses to releasing old thinking and behaviour and welcoming the new.
Being response-ABLE as we face disruption is in the hands of community, not first responders. (You might be interested in 6 ideas and 8 suggestions about how to be response-ABLE.)
A big question
Here is the question I ask multiple times a day: How do we make our way through this transition with care and compassion? I use this question to explore the pandemic, a death in the family, evolving relationships with friends and family, and my work.
When not warranted or wanted, rescue is not care and compassion and not resilience because we unnecessarily harm our collective ability to be response-ABLE in emergency situations. When I rescue others when they can act on their own, I erode their adaptability and resilience. A rescuer erodes my adaptability and resilience when they save me when I don’t need or want to be saved.
“A rescuer erodes my adaptability and resilience when they save me when I don’t need or want to be saved.”
Rescue: an opportunity to adapt
The value of rescue, if the person or people rescued survives, is an opportunity to adapt, to adjust to changing conditions.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the verb adapt means:
To change, or change something, to suit different conditions or uses
To change your ideas or behaviour to make them suitable for a new situation. (The good thing about children is that they adapt very easily to new environments. It took me a while to adapt to the new job.)
In biology: If a living thing adapts, it changes slightly over time so it can continue to exist in a particular environment. (Species have adapted to climate changes throughout history.)
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, adaptation means:
The process of changing to suit different conditions
The process in which a living thing changes slightly over time to be able to continue to exist in a particular environment, or in a change like this:
Evolution occurs as a result of adaptation to new environments
It’s these evolutionary adaptations that make aphids and other insects so destructive
Something produced to adjust to different conditions or uses, or to meet different situations (The movie was an adaptation of a novel.)
In biology: a characteristic of a plant or animal that makes it able to adjust to the conditions of a particular environment
To adapt is to adjust to changing conditions, to make adaptations.
“To adapt is to adjust to changing conditions, to make adaptations.”
For humans, this can be a choice to reduce the need to adapt or adapt as needed—a choice to avoid needing rescue or to adjust after being rescued.
Resilience: the ability to adapt
In contrast to adaptation, resilience, according to Merriam-Webster, is:
the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress
the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change
Resilience is the ability to adapt; if not able to adapt, we are not resilient.
“Resilience is the ability to adapt; if not able to adapt, we are not resilient.”
The special ingredient: self-renew
Where adaptation is about actions and processes to accommodate changes that have already occurred or are very likely to occur, resilience is both the ability to “weather the storm” and self-renew. If “weather the storm” is about bouncing back, self-renew is about bouncing back as something new, with improvement—some new understanding that changes how I act.
Here’s the difference. Imagine a city with an area where homes and businesses near the river are subject to flooding. As the river rises in the spring, or with a summer storm, the affected neighbourhoods and their city government respond by building temporary sandbag dikes to protect the buildings. If this happens enough, the city might build permanent dikes to avoid the effort, cost, and impact of flooding to people’s property. This is adaptation; with each flood, we take the hit.
“Self-renew” involves a new level of understanding on which we act, not just talk or think about. Self-renew involves relocating the homes and businesses to higher ground, a higher level of adaptation and resilience because we avoid taking the hit of the flood.
“A system in rescue mode does not contemplate how to avoid future emergencies or how to cultivate our ability to withstand the shock of crisis; in rescue mode we may be adaptive but not necessarily resilient.”
A system in rescue mode works to adapt to changing conditions and restore stability and find equilibrium. A system in rescue mode does not contemplate how to avoid future emergencies or how to cultivate our ability to withstand the shocks of crisis; in rescue mode, we may be adaptive but not necessarily resilient.
To be resilient, we need to be able to adapt to short-term emergency situations, as emergency first responders help us do, and look to longer-term adaptation strategies that encourage our capacity to self-renew.
That capacity to self-renew, at any scale, comes from this question: What else is possible?
While first responders may see firsthand that something else could be possible, it is the work of community to ask, explore and activate new possibilities. For example, North American firefighters promote Fire Prevention Month every October because they see, far more than we do, that 3 of 5 home fire deaths result from fires in homes with no working smoke alarms. They know the problem (preventable deaths) and a solution (working smoke alarms). Community has a role to play in our safety: choose operating smoke alarms and put in place the necessary rules and practices.
First responders zip in when we’ve screwed up, or an accident happens, to rescue us. First responders may see firsthand that something else needs to be possible. But it is community who will identify the possibility that will work for them in their context and choose to make it happen.
That big question —How do we make our way through this transition with care and compassion?—is only explored when community, which includes first responders but is not solely their work to do, asks what else is possible and dares to dream its desires for improvement into reality. That big question requires us to engage in emergency thinking as needed while exploring transition-oriented ways of thinking, making and doing.
Reflection
When things feel upside down for you, what do care and compassion feel like?
Where do you feel a desire to offer care and compassion to yourself or others?
Where in your life or your community are you asking, “What else is possible?”
This article is the fourth in a series about the relationship between community and emergency:
Scales of emergency response (Itch #1)—As the scale of emergency grows, the ability of a community to be proactive, responsive and response-ABLE becomes imperative.
Choices to enable our emergency response-ability (Itch #2)—6 ideas and 8 suggestions to be response-able at any scale of emergency.
Rescue is not resilience (Itch #3)— Rescue embodies resilience only when the rescuer takes action the rescued can’t do for themselves (and wants).
Resilience requires transition (Itch #4)—When busy rescuing others or looking for others to rescue us, we miss the opportunity to renew ourselves.