Resilience

Resilience.  The word that stayed with me, resonating from the speech in the high school auditorium, delivered today by the esteemed president of MIT, President Hockfield.  It was part of her answer to a student’s questions about what it takes to be successful at MIT. "You cannot be afraid to put yourself to the test, not afraid to fail," she says. " And to do this, you must be resilient."

How absolutely simple, clear, obvious. How could I have forgotten?

It takes someone trained as a biologist, with a passion for the creative work in the laboratory, with a commitment to science and technology education, to help me see what I should have known all along.  In the past months since J lost his job I have been so focused on the problem of our economic deficit that I had stopped focusing on this most fundamental element of our solution.

 As I sit in this auditorium my personal and professional world collide.  I am here today as part of my work as a school psychologist in the Oakland schools.  But several months ago I was listening to this same woman speaking at the parent’s weekend in an auditorium at MIT. It was before the election.  I was still doubtful about Obama’s chances of getting elected and was terrified about what would happen if he weren’t. Even though J had not yet lost his job   I knew that our country had lost its way and was in deep financial trouble. But here at MIT it felt as if there was no problem too big to solve.  Every one was hard at work in that hands-on roll up the sleeves get in the lab and stay up all night if you have to we will find a solution sort of way.  And all I could feel was hope.

I am sitting now in the auditorium at this school where I work, thinking of my daughter who is across the country in Cambridge.  Thinking about all she had to struggle with over the years, with a mother who worked full time and kids who mercilessly teased her because of for her love of numbers,  who a year ago found acceptance letter after acceptance letter coming in from colleges around the country, rewarding her for her commiment to math, science and engineering.   She should never feel guilty that in the end she chose this school that she had so long dreamed of attending. 

I am thinking too about the work I have done as a school psychologist with inner city children, with special needs children, with children born in poverty, scarred by loss, subjected to multiple traumas.  Time and again I had witnessed this miraculous force we called resiliency allow some to thrive despite these challenges.  It is the same force obvious after natural disasters, after the firestorms and floods, when the plants come back more vigorous than before.

And now Obama is making it happen in our country, in this   new era in which as President Hockfield puts it “being smart is being way cool.”  Where science can be restored again to its rightful place.  Where innovation is indeed our most reliable way out of this most serious global economic crisis.  I soak in her worlds as the life sustaining force I have so longed for in if  this parched land I have experienced in  California.  Our failures will teach us.  Our persistence will pay off.  We will heal our people. We will save our planet by discovering  new technologies. We will dare to dream again.