Issue No. 56

Everyone is running a long marathon. The end goal is different for each of us, but the resting area after the race is the same: eternal darkness. In the race, not everyone starts at the same point. Some are far behind, some are way ahead. The former has to find a way to catch up. The latter has a head start and may occasionally receive help from others.

I was one of those who appeared in the race at the very back with no one to help me. My parents tried until I finished high school, but after that, I was on my own. At 17, I finally realized life is going to pass me by no matter what I do, and it will not wait. Even when asleep, time passes by. I figured very early that I have to decide what life I want to have and keep my focus on it. If I fail, nobody is going to save me but me. Getting slapped in the face by reality multiple times is something not many people have experienced yet, so they take everything they have for granted. Most are living in a fantasy that everything they have will be there forever. They think their parents will be there forever. If your parents are in their late 40s, they have about 40 years left. How many times do you think you'd see them in those 40 years? If you're a working adult, probably once or twice a year. That's about 80 times you're going to see their faces. Your friends will probably move somewhere far in the next 5 years, and your communication suddenly will die out as each of you gets busier with your own families. Your physical possessions usually have a shelf life of 5 years. They will all be replaced after that. Your health can degrade in the snap of a finger, and suddenly you have a terminal illness that cannot be cured. That's how vulnerable our lives are. We are always bombarded with what could possibly kill us, but what makes us unique is our ability to recover from them.

Resilience is when something bad happens to you, and you can return to your original state. You recover from difficulties quite quicker than others. When someone hurts your feelings, you feel bad, but then you return to the original state of mind. When you're faced with a seemingly unsolvable issue, you solve it, and then you return to how you were before that problem occurred.

However, I think resilience is an overrated skill. What's missing from it is growth. When you're resilient, you just return to your original state again and again. Nothing really improves. If we want to improve every time something happens to us, we need to learn another skill: anti-fragility.

It is the opposite of fragility. If someone is fragile, when something bad happens to them, they destroy themselves bit by bit. A good example would be people who succumb to drugs when they have difficulties in life. Drugs become a gateway to them to release their frustrations or rather, to escape from it. As they keep using it, they lose a part of their mind that contributes to further degradation of their mind and life. Without intervention, this can lead to quick death. The opposite of this is anti-fragility. When something bad happens to an anti-fragile person, they are not necessarily happy about it. They can get frustrated, angry, or even depressed. But after the event happened, anti-fragile people actually grow from the experience and become stronger. For example, someone who lost their business in their first try would use that event as a lesson to do better business in the future. They use their difficulties as fuel to be better so that when good or bad happens, the result is always improvement.

I think anti-fragility is the closest we have to a superpower. Imagine benefiting from both negative and positive experiences. If you have this skill, you'll be unstoppable.

A good metaphor to understand fragility, resilience, and anti-fragility is the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi means “join with gold” — it is the Japanese art of repairing broken objects, often ceramic pottery or glass with gold lacquer.

When a ceramic cup is broken and it's not turned back into its original state, it's a fragile object.

When it's joined again with no other added elements, it's resilient because it returned to its original strength.

When you add a gold lacquer to it, it's anti-fragile because it has become stronger after it's broken.

Don't aim to be fragile or resilient. Aim to be anti-fragile. Anti-fragility is the only path to growth. Suffering and pain will come to us. Is it not better to use them as resources to become stronger the next time they arrive?

When a storm breaks your door with a strong wind, do you not replace it with a stronger door so that it can withstand the next storm?

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Until next week,