Robustness

 

Robustness as the ability to withstand the elements—whether that’s pressure, pain, or challenges. 

Is about how well you can navigate the emotional ups and downs that come with putting yourself out there. 

It’s not about waiting until you’re impervious to being triggered or hurt. 

Instead, it’s about building the resilience to handle those moments when they arise.

“Robustness is a word denoting health, psychological or physical; the ability to meet the world with vigor and impact. To be robust is to be physically or imaginatively present in the very firm presence of something or someone else. Being robust means we acknowledge the living current in something other than ourselves.”

 

“Robustness and vulnerability belong together. To be robust is to show a willingness to take collateral damage, to put up with temporary pain, noise, chaos, or our systems being temporarily undone.”

 

“A robust response always entertains the possibility of humiliation, it is also a kind of faith; a sense that we will somehow survive the impact of a vigorous meeting.”

 

“A lack of robustness denotes ill-health, psychological or physical, it can feed on itself; the less contact we have with anything other than our own body, our own rhythm, or the way we have arranged our life, the more afraid we can become of the frontier where actual noise, meetings, and changes occur.”

 

Robustness isn’t developed in isolation. 

It’s forged at the intersection of your internal state and the external world.

In other words, you can’t build robustness by staying under the covers at home. 

You have to expose yourself to those elements.

David Whyte

in, Consolations