Spiritual Breathing

The Covid-19 pandemic is still prowling in our lives, which cannot be denied and certainly, there has been something for everyone to think, reflect and come to terms with what the reality has become. Most of the people around the world, myself included, find themselves in the process of 'rehabilitation'. In the quest of giving a rational explanation on how we could turn our lives around or, for the most courageous, start it over.

Like it or not, the perspective of our existence has exponentially spiralled into trauma and fear. What is happening, what is the meaning of our life, what we can do with what has just happened.

Here comes into play the concept of 'Antifragility', an adaptive system developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb a Lebanese-American philosopher essayist. This came through completely new to me, as I have always known only the concept of fragility without the root word 'anti'; about the latter, during Melbourne's hardest lockdown, I happened to read a few books dedicated to how to deal with fragility, how to nurture it getting the best out of it.

Until a few nights ago, when I came across the Antifragility YouTube video, all my conceptions of the dimension of pain, suffering and hardship hadn't gone further than the first psychological reaction of 'If you fall, you gotta get back up all over again.' In the video, Tal Ben Shahar, student and teacher in the field of the Happiness Study, simply explains how the Antifragility system works; in this particular case, unlike resilience, once the pressure or trauma lifts, the particular individual feels stronger than he was before.

Each one of us, at some point in life, might have asked ourselves how great would it be to master the ability to convert what seems at first a failure or a fallout into our strength. However, it is quite hard sometimes to get a glimpse of the 'Silver Lining'. Moreover, for what inexplicable reason human nature keeps us staring at that slammed-closed door for so long instead of striking a deep breath and looking at other 'opened opportunities'. This may resonate with a concept mentioned in one of my previous articles (If We Listen to Our Body, It Will Tell Us the Unexpected- in Psychology), which is always more painful and psychologically debilitating to get rid of rejections than it is to receive an actual compliment or a life success. Each failure has its own intrinsic and constitutive weight, capable to teach a lesson and yet, still hitting strong.

Nassim Taleb uses the following words to define Antifragility:

"Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better. This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes (say, chicken soup or steak tartare with a drop of cognac), the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet". (https://fs.blog/an-antifragile-way-of-life/)

Some individuals, after facing defeat, can get into a thriving and reshaping instinct, where, like a piece of playdoh, that person enters into this completely new pattern of their life. A vivid example could be the tragic fire in Australia in 2020 which destroyed more than half of the animal habitat. It was a strenuous and heart-breaking recovery, but as Nassim Taleb mentioned, Nature always finds its way. Some can do it better, some may be at their best, and still, others are getting the hang of it. - The latter may be the category on which I am sitting right now -

The once-popular and coveted Resilience is supposedly being replaced by Antifragility. Almost like in a sort of battlefield, life can be presented to our eyes as a series of days and nights to be lived and felt, or on the other hand, an exciting journey where every single day is a revelation with motivation growing exponentially once obstacles arise. Positivity is also a pivot for this process being well assessed; we have the capability to paint our canvas in any better possible way. We deserve it. That might sound easier said than done, (I am trying myself to internalise this process while I writing this article) however, there is no such thing as the whole understanding of how precious our spiritual self could be, and how crucial it is in a long run, breathing and being present to ourselves with a mystical but honourable motto by Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in".