Resiliency is Fun Or Does Fun create more Resilience.

Resiliency is Fun or Does Fun create more Resilience

John Paul Derryberry

At some point in my life, I realized that figuring out how to be good at stuff in the middle of a chaotic moment was fun. It could have been the countless hours of getting beat on the basketball court only to emerge a good enough player to earn a college scholarship. It could have been how I tackled my recovery from depression and suicidal thinking, just challenging myself to have as many good days in a row as possible. But, perhaps it was working with folks other people deemed not savable that revealed why resiliency was a big key to my life. Some people had to adopt to the philosophy we wouldn’t give up on these folks.

As I got traversed life during my twenties, at some point, all the work it took to find success became fun, or because I was having fun, I became more resilient. It is a tricky question for me to answer. I honestly do not know which one led to the other. However, I remember a significant moment in my basketball career as a sophomore. It was a practice and I was on the losing squad. But I kept pushing and pushing, and I heard a teammate say, J.P. won't quit. A smile came over my face as I knew the tide was turning. He was tired of trying, and I was having fun with all the attempts at finding success.

Or, when I worked with a couple of kids who we were struggling to reach, and our team discussed whether we should transfer their programs. Two of us balked at the questions with a response of, "Why would we move them? The fun was in figuring them out." In both these examples, the people around us proved incredibly resilient, but before we realized that, we just decided to have a bunch of fun. So again, the question became, was it because we discovered resiliency, or were we resilient because we had fun?

Maybe it doesn't ultimately matter to answer the question and perhaps realize that it's easy to have both when the fun is present. I didn't fully move on from suicidal thinking until I realized how fun life could be, even after great tragedies. Allowing yourself to have fun after moments that shake your foundation frequently feels icky initially, but it's the first moment that resiliency shines through. Life can suck and having the courage to have fun again is a big step. It's almost yelling at the cosmos, I know life will knock me down again, but I will enjoy it until it does. Unfortunately, we often don't understand the power of those moments.

I had a co-worker say to me a couple of years back, I have never worked with someone so resilient before. No matter what is thrown at you, you seem to move forward and attempt to do better. So I smiled and said, a long time ago, I realized that figuring stuff out is the fun part. So you call it resiliency; I think it's more like I'm just having a good time trying to understand what's going on. So is resiliency fun, or does joy impact our ability to be resilient? If you ask me, it's both- mainly because I know firsthand we need a lot of both to navigate life with any dignity and find success no matter what we face.