This is not the more substantive discussion I had intended to post this weekend. I had planned some explorations of the concept of community resilience, based on recent travels and meetings that allowed me to help explore such topics, and other initiatives in which I am involved would have allowed me to elaborate on the theme in subsequent posts once I started.

Fate intervened in the form of a microscopic being that somehow manages to waylay us human beings. As early as last Sunday, without knowing the precise cause, I began to sense that unnerving malaise that often precedes a full assault by some sort of virus or bacteria. But I got through the week until Thanksgiving morning, when a slight chill the night before became a sore throat, which was not yet enough to keep me from helping fix dinner for 15 people at our home that day. I took personal responsibility for the turkey, stuffing, salad, and yams, and my wife did the rest. While not terribly energetic, I made it through the dinner, but slowly lost steam into the evening. By the time our guests had left, I was exhausted.

But I had plans for the weekend—lots of work I wanted to catch up on, reviewing proposals for a federal grant competition, writing a briefing paper on the use of visioning exercises in post-disaster recovery planning, and other items that keep me busy. Not that I didn’t plan to relax a bit, but I had things that needed to get done.

For the most part, they are still waiting, and the bug that bit me has taught me yet again that my agenda is not always the one that will prevail. A mild fever kicked in, as did throat and sinus congestion, and an overall feeling that my personal energy level was badly depleted. In short, the last four days have made clear that some of the things I want to attend to will simply have to wait because I lack the immediate resilience to make them happen within my intended time frame. Personal resilience is not always a matter of snapping back into prime condition in a day or two; sometimes it is a matter of outlasting the affliction through sheer patience and persistence. I simply decided that, if I could not maintain adequate mental focus for the tasks that lay ahead, those tasks would have to wait. To persist with a level of exertion that denies your body the restorative rest it needs to put things right may well extend the visitation of the offending bug.

I’m a very poor fatalist, overall, but I do understand that in some cases, it pays to just wait it out.

You’ll hear more from me on community resilience later. For now, personal resilience seems a more appropriate topic.

Jim Schwab