#1. Anty-fragile people quit the “If only” Syndrome.
My grandfather never cried. And one day, I asked him why. He replied that there were two reasons.
- “I grew up when crying served no purpose except to make things worse.”
- “All the obstacles and setbacks have brought me here and have made me who I am.”
After listening to him, I realized that my mom, who lives in bone pain 24/7, is just like her dad; she never cries, she always keeps moving forward, no matter all the crap she has to deal with, and throughout her life believe me, she has dealt with tons of crap.
- Divorce.
- Chronic illnesses.
- Eleven operations in the operating room and counting.
The thing is, if you look closely, some ordinary people have extraordinary powers.
One of those powers is to be “anti-fragile” and resilient.
I have observed these people for years and recently discovered that these three signs can identify them.
Anty-fragile people quit the “If only” Syndrome.
When doing a little archeology in their lifeline, you quickly discover that anti-fragile people have gone through significant traumas and adversities.
Problems so significant that they could not afford to hesitate.
Example,
The waitress, where I eat breakfast every morning, was raised in foster homes because she was a victim of child abuse. She married and had two girls when she grew up, and her husband abandoned her.
The waitress works double shifts in the cafeteria, and her teenage daughters don’t exactly make it easy for her when they get home. They throw everything in her face.
But she can’t wait for her situation to improve. She has to face life with the resources she has daily, whether many or few.
That is why she always says,
“If only I have more money. If only I had a romantic partner. If only I have the perfect job. F*ck that, I goona make it without all of that.”
Anti-fragile people like them don’t wait for the planets to align; they fight but also need understanding.
As the waitress puts it,
“We strong people seem to have skin as tough as a bear. But that’s not always the case; there are days when we’re still bears but teddy bears and we need a hug that no one gives us.”
Anty-fragile people see miracles when people only see the struggle.
My 80-year-old neighbor across the street has had a life that many might consider a nightmare.
- He had a son with a rare degenerative disease, and he died a couple of decades ago.
- His wife started wheelchair-bound after the son’s death due to a severe nervous breakdown.
- Recently, his wife passed away.
The man is alone, very alone. And when I meet him on the street, I talk to him for a while. And he tells me things that make my hair stand on end.
Things like how he makes and unmakes the bed seven times until it’s perfect to kill time.
But he also tells me other things that make me realize that we live surrounded by miracles.
The other day, she told me,
“I love cleaning the house while listening to music. In my son’s room I discovered a box full of Mozart cassette tapes recorded from the radio. My son entertained himself by recording them, because he couldn’t go outside to play with the other kids.”
I got to thinking about it, and it is a miracle that his son, who has been dead for decades, has left a collection of cassette tapes that are now helping him survive the grief of losing his wife.
But I also realized that if the same thing (finding the cassettes) happens to someone else, instead of rejoicing, they start to cry and go into depression.
Ergo, anti-fragile people can see beauty where we only see pain.
Antifragile people are not self-deluded.
A week ago, I found a lady in her 70s lying on the ground. She had gone for a walk because she had diabetes and stumbled over a pothole.
The woman had left her cell phone at home, and she was worried about her husband. I tried to call him, but the woman told me he was deaf and rarely answered.
I called an ambulance, and as it arrived, the woman told me she had been calling for help for ten minutes without anyone stopping. — She had a bump on her forehead that looked like a tennis ball (no exaggeration).
When she told me about it, I instinctively said, “How can we be so dehumanized today that no one helps anyone anymore?”
And she replied something that blew my mind.
“Stop being naive. Learn to watch how people treat each other. How they use each other without hardly thinking about what they do or the consequences of what they do, just driven by their selfishness. And you will be aware that we all live in a collective lie supported by self-deception that allows us to continue to ignore what horrible human beings we really are.”
After which, he smiled at me and said, “But there are still good people. You stopped to help me.”
I guess the story’s moral is that contrary to what people think, anti-fragile people don’t go through life reeking of toxic positivity; instead, they see reality objectively, and instead of falling apart, they keep calm and keep fighting.
A virtual hug
AG
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