I was travelling in Vishakhapatnam last week and when landing at the airport, I was stunned and horrified at the destruction that Cyclone Hudhud had created almost a month back. The airport itself was completely devastated; there was no roof. It was hard to find one's bearings – on one hand, the conveyor belt was bringing the bags and on the other side, the conveyor belts were open to the sky. I was trying to get some semblance of what this building looked like and if I hadn't been to Vizag before, I would have had great difficulty. The floor to ceiling mural that was such an integral part of the airport was standing like a bare edifice right in the middle. The stark reality of the destruction that a 206-mile per hour cyclone that landed smack on the city if Vizag could do! Meteorologists say that this is the first cyclone to hit a city in India. Most cyclones have touched coastal places, but never a city. It seemed like Vizag took the hit.
But here's the thing that got me. I was looking at the absolute carnage across. I could see twisted steel and all lying to one side where they had cleaned it up. But in the midst of this, they had somehow managed to get a semblance of normalcy in allowing flights to land and take off. That was such a wonderful sight! To see the resilience – because that didn't knock them out. I went across right from Vishakhapatnam to Srikakulam, which was also one of the areas that was hit. I was amazed at the trees that were felled, steel frames broken and lying to one side of the road. Absolute carnage everywhere!
I understand that Vizag itself has about 20,000 electric poles and between the Monday and Tuesday, they managed to put up 1000 poles and restore some kind of electricity to places. By Wednesday, 3000 poles were up. This was the kind of response that the administration had. I was amazed. Here was something positive to see. Here was a group of people who haven't been knocked askance by what hit them, but have regrouped and are fighting back to try and get things back to normal.
That's resilience! That's what we do when the storms of life come our way. I was so impressed, not only with seeing what was happening, but talking to local people. At the hotel where I stayed, the duty manager was talking about how glass was shattered on the top floors. But, he said, that within a day, they had the streets cleared and buses were plying so traffic was able to move. There was almost a sense of pride in his voice as he talked about it.
I came away with such a warm glow from all of this, thinking how heart-warming it was – to see that when adversity strikes, it doesn't knock one down. It made them sit up and say, "Okay, let's get going and get back to where we were before."
It also made me think this morning, how you and I react when the storms come our way, when adversity comes, when things don't go as they should and we are left reeling. The reality is that adversity hits everybody. It is no respecter of anything, not the rich nor the poor, not the educated nor the illiterate. Whatever you have or do not have, adversity will hit you. Maybe today, you are not in a comfortable place, not in the best place that you have been in your life. Maybe in the last couple of months, things have not really gone your way and you are feeling the effects on yourself. How are things going with you today?
Many years ago, in 1975, an experiment was done by Donald Hiroto and Martin Seligman and they studied how people deal with the whole idea of helplessness. If you've read some of Seligman's works, you will know that he is known for his 'Learned Helplessness' writings. But this experiment had three groups of people:
The first group was people who were exposed to an annoying loud noise that they could stop by pushing a button in front of them. The second group heard the same noise but couldn't turn it off, though they tried hard. The third group, which was the control group, heard nothing at all.
Later, the following day, the subjects were faced with a brand new situation that again involved noise. To turn off the noise, all they had to do was move their hands about 12 inches. The people in the first and third groups figured this out and readily learned to avoid the noise. But, here's the interesting thing! Those in the second group typically did nothing. In phase 1, they had failed; realizing they had no control, they became passive in phase 2, expecting more failure. They didn't even try to escape.
He calls that Learned Helplessness, that we allow some of the things that have happened in our lives to affect us and say, "That's the way it has happened before; I'm not going to do something about this new situation." That's a dangerous place for us to be in – to allow the past to dictate our present and shape our future. The ideal is to always look at something that is happening and say, "That has happened before. But there is no reason to think that it cannot have a different scenario attached to it right now." For anybody to have that kind of an outlook, as Seligman says in his article, one has to have optimism. You need to move away from pessimism.
How do we typically fall when we face adversity? Three typical ways:
1. We can fall apart with PTSD, depression and, in extreme cases, suicide. We've seen and heard about people like that.
2. React with symptoms like you may be depressed, have anxious thoughts, which might last for a month or so. But with help, physical, psychological and spiritual measures, you can bounce back to where you were before this particular event or trauma hit you. That is resilience.
3. Experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorders, anxiety; reel with it for over a year and then come back later. This is post traumatic growth, as Friedrich Nietzsche used to say, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." But that's not the ideal.
The ideal is to move with the adversity and then come back. It's like a tall tree that is able to sway in the wind. One of the things I saw was huge trees with thick trunks but with short shallow roots – they were lying on their sides.
I wonder how you are doing today. How resilient are you? Are you doing well in terms of the storms of life that have come your way? That's my question for you. Do you have a positive outlook as we face issues in our lives? As I close, Seligman also said that there are four ways that we might respond and which cause us to have a solid foundation. These four areas are:
· Emotional
· Family
· Social
· Spiritual
Somehow we need to be connected in to these areas. Emotionally strong, have a good sense of family, good circle of friends and a strong foundation in the faith.
Our Holy Scriptures, the Bible says in Matthew 7. Jesus says, "If you hear these words of mine and you live by them, then you will be like a house that is built on solid rock, which will not fall. Even when the storms of life hit us, we will not fall like a house that is built on sand, that knows spiritual things and awareness, but doesn't listen to my words." My prayer for you this morning is that you will be grounded on the rock, that when the storms of life come your way, you will have the resilience to bounce back.
Can I pray with you? Almighty God, bless each one on this call. Lord, you know who they are; you know what they are going through. You know that they need your strength and your vigor even for today. Help us all to be resilient, to be able to be hit, but bounce back and continue to walk victoriously in life. Fill us with optimism. We ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
• Cyclone Hudhud, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Cyclone-Hudhud-Vizag-slips-into-dark-age/articleshow/44830890.cms
• Martin E. P. Seligman, "Building Resilience." https://hbr.org/2011/04/building-resilience (along with Donald Hiroto.)
• Bible quote: Matthew 7:24-27
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