Year-end is a good time to look back at what unfolded during the year. Think of what you did and how you did it as well as perhaps what you could have done better.
Reflection for me sometimes involves good storytelling, and so now I want to share stories that resonated with me. Each of the selected stories resonate with a single theme: resilience.
Resilience is that feature of character that demonstrates an ability to bend but not break. Leaders need resilience because they are often faced by obstacles that can overwhelm them. Few remain defeated for long, and so examining resilience is always a good leadership lesson.
Here are my choice stories:
Dunkirk is the epic film drama of British (along with French and Belgian) forces from the beach in France occurred in late spring 1940. What could have been ignominious defeat was transformed by newly installed Prime Minister Winston Churchill into a moment of resolve and resolution. As depicted by writer-director Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk is depicted as a collection of small stories of men and women who faced great odds and through courage and determination made it safely back to Britain.
Godless, written and directed by Scott Frank, is a good-old fashioned Western movie made in seven episodes for Netflix. It is a classic good vs. evil story with an unusual backdrop, a mining town that is nearly totally comprised of women, all the men having been killed in a mining accident. The story arc hangs on the pending conflict between an outlaw gang leader and his one-time protégé now seeking redemption.
The backdrop of the story, however, depicts the stories of the women, who thanks to their ingenuity and resourcefulness, get along quite well without the company of men.
The Long Road Home tells the story of a group of soldiers who were deployed to Sadr City, Iraq in 2004. The mini-series, developed by Mikko Alanne and based on the book by Martha Raddatz, shows the courage of troops under fire in challenging circumstances as well as the bravery of their loved ones at home.
As a member of the 99% of Americans who do not serve in the military, I urge my fellow civilians to watch this series because it depicts the tragedy and deprivation of service in conflict but also the heroism that comes with being a soldier and a member of that soldier’s family. Resilience in the face of adversity has never burned more brightly.
Barking to the Choir is a memoir by Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries, the largest gang intervention program in the United States. Father G, or often just G, is a man who wears his heart beneath his bushy white beard. The stories he tells in the book echo his commitment to serving others as well as his journey of faith.
Peppering nearly every page however is a story of one homie or home girl or another – all of them former gang members -- who has been transformed by the opportunity to work in a real job for a real paycheck. Money is not the object; dignity is. This is resilience indeed.
Father Boyle captures their stories so eloquently. At times you will laugh out loud, at other times you will shed a tear, but you will come away from reading Barking to the Choir with a renewed sense of faith in man.
Stories of resilience by design reaffirm faith in ourselves, and each of these works do so dramatically in the truest sense – through their art form.
My final choice resonates resilience in its affirmation of life itself. It is a book of poetry-- Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser, one-time Poet Laureate of the United States. A former insurance executive, Kooser delves into the simplicity of life from cold winter mornings in Nebraska to small town everyday doings.
One poem speaks to our collective desire to persevere. It is called “Mourners.” In the short poem, just nine lines long, Kooser writes of people coming together to mourn the passing of a friend.
They came this afternoon to say goodbye,
but now they keep saying hello and hello,
peering into each other’s faces,
slow to let go of each other’s hands.
Resilience stems from hardship, and perhaps loss, but it is rooted in a desire to continue to survive, even thrive, and it is even better when that survival is nurtured by the collective support of others.
