RESILIENCE - The Iron Virtue Of Steel

The word Resilience is derived from the latin word “resilire,” meaning “to leap back.”

The will to survive is a natural instinct in humankind. But not many people are “up to” the rigors it takes to survive. Survival may be the fittest, but it comes with a price, which in some instance is too high for many a people to pay. Resilience is the panacea to the ailment of high price of survival, in this instance.

Life is like a war with so many battles to fight. The battle to earn a decent living, the battle to be well educated, the battle to provide for self and family, the battle to have social acceptability, the battle to have the dream job, the battle to have our voice heard and count, the battle to stay healthy and strong, the battle to be your brothers keeper. The battle seems endless! Only those who are the fittest can fight the battles and win the war. Resilience is to man what carbon is to steel. Resilience is the prerequisite that we all must meet in order to win the war of life.

Resilience is a necessary virtue we all need to cultivate. It is what brings us back to the battle field of life, after losing so many previous battles, with the hindsight that each battle is not the same. It is the power and strength that comes from being “knocked down” many times, but “leaping back,” willing to fight the war to a conclusive end. Reslience is the adrenaline of courage that flows into us saying, “even though I’m down, don’t count me out yet.” Resilience is the commandant on the battle field that fired- up his troupe to victory shouting, “failure is not an option.”

Larry Newman said, “When people are hit with an extreme, life-disrupting loss, they will never be the same again. They feel either ‘wounded and bitter’ or ‘strengthened and better’.”

Resilience does not make us feel “wounded and bitter” towards life, when life deals us “the big blow.” But makes us “strengthened and better” to leap back and keep fighting.

In 1982, at age 30, Marion Luna Brem was a very busy woman. Married, with two sons, she was a full-time mother and homemaker, worked part-time as a switch-board operator for an auto dealership, and was taking college classes in Dallas, Texas.

When Marion discovered a lump in her left breast, she went for a medical examination. She was told it was benign, but in the months that followed the lump kept getting larger.

Marion went to a different doctor who gave her shocking news. She had a very aggressive form of cancer in her breast and had cervical cancer as well. She had an emergency hysterectomy, a radical mastectomy, and started daily chemotherapy treatments. Even so, the doctor told her she had only a few short years to live.

The strain on her family increased when her husband's medical insurance ran out. Their medical bills soared and they went deeply into debt. Then she was hit with another devastating blow. Her 14 year marriage ended.

She says she doesn't blame her husband for leaving. She'd lost all her hair, was emaciated, and they had huge debts. The strain of it all was too much for him.

Impoverished and with her energy depleted by chemotherapy, Marion wondered what she could do to support herself and her sons. A low paying hourly job wouldn't be enough. Her experience working at an auto dealership led her to believe she could be successful selling cars. Wearing a wig to cover her bald head, she went to auto dealerships asking to be hired into the sales department. Partly because she was a woman and partly because she is Hispanic, she was turned down sixteen times. But she didn't stop trying. At the seventeenth dealership the sales manager felt that she was "nervy" enough to succeed and hired her.

Her determination paid off. A year later she won the "Salesman of the Year" award. (The award says "salesman.") Becoming the top person in sales was not enough for her, however. She wanted to own her own dealership. She had some ideas about how to make an auto dealership an outstanding place for employees and customers. She sold her idea to an investor and soon opened her own dealership.

Her fast pace was not good for her health, however. In 1984 she needed surgery to remove a lump in her other breast. She says she had to tell herself to slow down. "Anytime you take a tiny peak at death like I did," she says, "you live your life with more urgency. That was a special challenge for me because I tended to run my business with my urgency." She finally learned that she had to pace herself better and rest at times, and her cancer has been in remission since 1993.

Now 48, Marion Brem, with the help of her two grown sons, runs two very successful auto dealerships, has an advertising agency, and has real estate holdings that combine to generate $45 million in annual revenue. She is also part owner of a bank that helps minority women start businesses.

This story of resiliency has two messages. One is to show what a determined person can do when he or she chooses to overcome life's adversities. The other is to emphasize how many times people who find themselves in life-threatening conditions or situations, like cancer have worked at an exhausting pace without let up.

My dear friends, if you are interested in being successful in whatesoever you do or intend to do, this sister virtue of courage, determination, endurance, perseverance, faith, called RESILIENCE, is a must for you.

OJ.