Do you want to be resilient?

It's been a crazy day with a lot of snow arriving last night and then a lot of rain. Our office was closed for three hours this morning to allow things to settle out and then we were asked to come in if we could. I may write about dealing with the water-logged snow and the quick change of temperature and rising wind some time. But not right now. I want to write about a story I heard on the radio as I drove in. I wouldn't have heard it if I hadn't gone in late.

The story was, appropriately, on the American Public Media show The Story that plays on our local National Public Radio station, WCAI. Today's story was about Haiti a year after the earthquake hit (New York Times article here but you may need to sign up to read it - it's free). Specifically, the part of the show caught my attention was the interview with Yolette Etienne - a worker with Oxfam in Haiti. The whole story is amazing and you should go here to hear it and the other stories about the brave heroes who are still in Haiti trying to help the people out. But one thing Yolette said really struck me. She said that people outside Haiti are amazed how resilient the people there are. But she said that she doesn't want to be resilient. That sounded odd and I thought I may have misunderstood what she said because of her accented English. But as she talked, I understood. She said she didn't want to be resilient if it meant continuing to live as she had for the last year or more. She wanted to do better. She wanted to lift the standards for life in Haiti. She talked about this disaster being an opportunity to do things right in the country.

It made me think about my own life. How often do I accept the way things are just because I don't want to rock the boat, because I want to show that I can be resilient or because I'm just too lazy to do anything about it? Do I want things to improve? Do I want my wife and children to have a better life? Do I want things in our world to improve? Sometimes it takes being annoyed to make things better. To improve things, you have to admit that things CAN improve. It takes being a little mad at your situation to make your situation better. And it means getting up off your butt to get started. That's the hard part. So, I've written this down to remind myself about it.

The picture is from the Oxfam.org site.