The resilience of the human spirit is something I would love to study further, and it always amazes me how people withstand multiple crisis or illnesses and get back up with a fighting spirit. I’ve volunteered for organisations helping people who have endured extreme, and multiple losses and traumas, people who could well choose to stay ‘broken’, but who never cease to astound me with their resilience and human spirit, their willingness to work hard as individuals to overcome their situations. I once asked a friend who became homeless aged 11; ‘Why did you run away from home?’ He candidly replied; ‘it was better than being sexually abused by my father and his friends, and being used as an ashtray by my mum’, as he showed me his scarred stomach and back… 

Right now I have a couple of friends who seem to be fighting hard to find their own deeper resilience, and it is wonderful to watch this blossoming of inner strength. I suspect it was/is always there, for them and for all of us, we just have to reach deep inside of ourselves and search to find it. It usually means looking in the mirror, the thing I find the hardest of all phases of personal growth. Sometimes, the only word that comes to mind when I do this is … Ouch!!! To my friends, I say: “Go forth, be strong, and watch the transcendence in your own mirror. You will love what you see.”

Sometimes I resort to Wikipedia, which defines human spirit as this:

“Human spirit is a component of human philosophy, psychology and religion – the spiritual or mental part of humanity. While the term can be used with the same meaning as “human soul”, human spirit is sometimes used to refer to the impersonal, universal or higher component of human nature in contrast to soul or psyche which can refer to the ego or lower element. In the models of Daniel A. Helminiak and Bernard Lonergan, human spirit is considered to be the mental functions of awareness, insight, understanding, judgment and other reasoning powers. It is distinguished from the separate component of psyche which comprises the entities of emotion, images, memory and personality. John Teske views human spirit as a social construct representing the qualities of purpose and meaning which transcend the individual human.”

And then I found this marvellous essay by Bernhard Kempler I wanted to share;

“How can we account for the resilience of the human spirit?  We come into the world confronted by what William James famously called “a blooming buzzing confusion,” and we must somehow organize this chaos into a reasonably stable and meaningful personal world which includes a sense of a continuous, stable, yet dynamic self. And, as Jung so well understood, our ego must deal not only with external challenges but also challenges from archetypal psychic energies which press from the “inside”, demanding expression in our individual lives.

The issue of “resilience” comes up powerfully when we are faced with extreme situations, situations for which we have had little or no occasion to develop adaptive mechanisms. How does our psyche withstand such outrageous attacks as war, criminal violation, brutality, and even life threatening illness? What impact do such experiences have on our trust in an orderly and predictable universe, on our security, and our belief in our value as human beings? Why do some individuals, whether adults or children, live through such extreme traumatic experiences, with their spirit relatively intact, while others are permanently damaged? Is it something intrinsic in their personality makeup, some genetic component of character? Is it some as yet unknown help or support they received?” Read more…