ABOUT RESILIENCE
Italian is nothing but the Latin language as it has transformed over the centuries in the various areas of my country.
I want to tell the story of an extraordinary journey of a great word — resilience, which has come back into fashion in the common Italian lexicon after centuries of oblivion.
In the past, it was used almost exclusively by the scientific community to indicate the physical ability of bodies to absorb blows and sounds and to be able to return to their original condition.
English was the first language capable of appropriating the concept conveyed by resilient, inheriting its present multiple-meaning from the early seventeenth century.
In Italy, the term resilient started to appear written this way about ten years ago in some popular newspapers.
The articles amused me because their very English lexicon grabbed words for words.
It’s funny to think that the word resilience is of Latin origin —
that Italian is nothing but the evolution of Latin, and —
that it was cleared in its broadest sense just by the Anglo-Saxon world.
Nowadays, the term resilience has passed the test in Italy and has been introduced in many fields.
From an abstract in Wikipedia-
-In ecology and biology, resilience is the ability of living matter to repair itself after damage or that of a community or ecological system to return to its initial state after being subjected to a disturbance that changed that state.
-In engineering, resilience is the ability of a material to absorb energy due to elastic and plastic deformations up to its failure.
-In psychology, resilience is the ability to deal with traumatic events positively.
This last aspect is formidable, and it is the one that in the previous two years, with the appearance of Covid, involved us all a bit.
What is resilience?
Many are wondering this and are reaching different conclusions.
Aaron Antonovsky, for example, a psychology researcher from the last century, asked himself this question when he began to study the ability of people who have gone through traumatic periods of crisis to adapt and overcome difficulties.
The search for him went as far as the victims who survived the Holocaust. There were many cases of suicide, but many, on the other hand, among the people who chose to continue living were cases of lives led with extraordinary personal and professional success.
What did the latter have that others lacked?
Antonovsky concludes that what those flourishing have, above all, could attribute meaning to what had happened to them.
On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.”
Summing up the statements of Antonovsky and Nietzsche, we deduce that in addition to giving meaning to the past traumatic event, it is necessary to fill the future with enormous purpose.
But are we resilient, or do we become so?
The discussion is open.
For some experts, it’s a matter of genes, associated with factors related to the environment in which we grow up —
but the exciting thing is that resilience, like gymnastics, must be practiced to show its strength.
A famous painter who impressed me with his resilience is Henry Matisse.
His artistic activity was a continuous building up of resilience because —
Matisse never wanted to bow to the rules of art, just expressing himself in his works with his language.
He consistently believed that an artist must never be a prisoner of himself, of a style, of a reputation, or success.
The art critics made him pay dearly for his lack of submission, making things difficult for him.
Resilience —
In its Latin etymology, resilience comes from resalio, or the iterative salio, meaning to jump — a verb associated with a precise image: jumping on a boat searching for salvation —
as a ship that may have capsized, a fact that entails a further test of agility.
Matisse ascended higher than a kite in his leap.
He was able to agilely get back on his boat heading towards his later years — -
experiencing an incredible journey — -
despite the wind blowing against him.
“Matisse has the sun in his belly,”
Pablo Picasso, a great friend and rival of his, would say —
moved in admiration —
Beautiful words, almost prophetic.
But let’s go on with his story.
In 1941, Henri Matisse underwent painful surgery due to bowel cancer, diagnosed in the same year.
He survived, but he had to use a wheelchair and couldn’t use a paintbrush because of his weakness.
Far from giving up, Matisse invented collages (gouaches découpés), a new way to create art, and he called it “painting with scissors.” First, he began to cut out previously painted pieces of paper with scissors.
He represented abstract and real-world elements in various shapes and different sizes.
Then he combined them to form authentic artistic masterpieces like “poetry that is seen rather than felt.”
Quote by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Henry Matisse strengthened his resilience —
It took as much time as he needed to swallow each bitter pill, then he lived again.
Mercilessly mocked by the critics, the artist considered this second chance at life as a chance to expand his creative spirit.
Matisse, the abstract painter who almost reinvented color in painting, found maximum fulfillment in the poverty of cut-outs.
The painter made collages, those things that children love to create, sticking papers and fingers.
They were two-dimensional, joyful, colorful, and undoubtedly a hymn to life.
He once declared that only the works created after his illness represented him accurately: entirely free.
Struck by the excruciating pain of cancer, he had been wondering if it was better to die.
He chose to live because the image of himself closed in the narrow and dark space of a tomb repulsed him
— the one who would paint so many doors and windows in his paintings open wide to the world!
Like in a pitch-black night, his belly had grown dark.
Then the sun shone in his guts again.
Well, yes. I can see it perfectly!
Because RESILIENCE is when we choose to make the most of what’s left —
And as previously mentioned, it gives meaning to a past or current traumatic event and helps project oneself into the future with a purpose that fills days with sense.
What was Henry Matisse’s driving goal?
Be happy and make others happy.
The subject most interested Matisse was the human figure, the human being, not a still life or a landscape.
He drew his happiness from a fulfilling, hard day’s work, brightening the atmosphere all around —
because he wanted to relieve people of pain and fatigue.
The life of Henry Matisse (1869–1954) passed through two wars, human grief, and great suffering.
His last great work was the tiny, ineffable Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire (1952) in Vence in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.
So, Matisse, who was a believer in his way, describing the small church revealed his true intentions:
“It is necessary to decorate the altar lightly… This lightness gives a feeling of liberation, so much so that my chapel is not: ‘Brothers, we must die.
It is, on the contrary: ‘Brothers, we must live!’”
Then he went on:
“A Church full of gaiety — a space that makes people happy … May all who visit this place leave happy and rested.”
Henry Matisse’s fervent purpose makes him unstoppable because, yes, love yourself and others.
It is truly outstanding!
Note: I mean, especially for me, being a words geek,
it comes naturally to give them an image, a vision, particularly to abstract
nouns that —
I wish to make more intimate and tangible.
