Life above zero and Resilience

While cleaning my room recently, I found a ball hidden under a cupboard. I had these colourful, rubber balls which used to come in many sizes. Many might actually know their name too; THE CRAZY BALLS. The peculiar thing about these balls was that the harder you throw them on the ground, the higher they used to bounce; and by higher I mean they literally managed to touch the ceiling once. I realized that these balls can represent a very important concept and skill in a very comic, graphic way, in my head. The concept is called “resilience and life above zero.”

Imagine if our life was plotted on a graph paper. Let’s say, the X-axis lies at the centre of the paper, at 0. Everything negative, a lot of negativity, bad health would go below this X axis, which would be life below zero. Then remember the math rule we learnt by heart- positive and negative cancel each other out. So, equal bits of positive and negative, will equal to zero and lie on the X axis. Then finally, lots and lots of positives would take you above that X axis, this is what we call, life above zero.

Let's leave the theory now ( I found it from Google as a psy-enthusiast kiddo), but let’s see how these crazy balls come into picture. I thought, as a kid I used to throw the ball down, hoping it will come back right up in my hand. So, the level of my hand was zero, the level below the hand was below zero and the level above my hand was above zero. No matter how hard I tried, this ball rarely stopped at the level of my hand, it always went above it.

What we need to show this virus is that we are like these crazy balls, the harder we hit the ground, the higher we rise. That’s when I also thought of this episode of Noddy, where the city gets flooded with big bouncing balls. Once this is all over, (don’t flood the streets right now, stay in) we can also be the bouncy balls and flood the city. We can bounce higher than ever before and show everyone that, “yes, we are crazy!”, as most of my friends, I observe, make it a point to post on social media that they are crazy. We will have a new found energy to do better, work better and achieve better after a month of negativity. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, Newton said. So opposite of negativity is positivity, but we can’t stay at equal reaction, we need a greater reaction that will give us a better kick start. This jumping back, to go to a life above zero, is called resilience.

We can thank our fairy god mother Ann Masten who calls this concept “ordinary magic” and makes us realize that we all have this power within us.

Resilience is nothing but striving for and achieving good things despite challenges . This power that we all have, to not just overcome challenges but have some good outcomes despite the challenges, is what Masten called “ordinary magic”. We do this every day, overcoming challenges. So why can’t we do it now? And the best way to make this magic ordinary is for each one of us to do it. When we all do something collectively, does it really become extraordinary?

Resilience for me is to still perform well or better than my previous scores after this gap of a month. For me it is to remain positive, hopeful, optimistic, grateful and happy despite the negativity around. I can use this time to do something I have always wanted to do and finding new goals to achieve, like acquiring a certain level of mastery in the instrument that I am learning. I am trying to get into the habit of exercising which I can continue later as well. I tried taking this opportunity by doing something to help people to the best of my ability, by starting an online 5AM CLUB with My Mentor Rajeshwar Channe, by writing blogs to help spread positivity. Easily said, I am trying to be a better version of myself. It is like we are given the time to have a “system update” where we have to update our software (mental strengths) and hardware (physical health) and finding something to live for. Thanks to covid-19!

With us, we have an armour of family, friends, doctors, bankers, social workers, sanitation workers, police, vendors, to help us get through this. We can build our skill sets in this time to help us stay happy and achieve something later. We can rest well so that we save energy to do better, work harder later. We can find better goals, better things to do, enjoy silence in city and experience the nature around us, spend time with loved ones in person or virtually and make sure we all stay safe. With so many weapons to defeat negativity, we can be like those crazy balls, bounce higher to life above zero with a little bit of the ordinary magic! Good can still win over evil, if we see and use the magic right!

Thank You!

-Kshitija