It's All About the Bounce

A childhood friend of mine, Kenneth, was in a terrible accident several years ago -- he slipped while rappelling off a bridge with a bunch of friends, and fell some 80 feet to the ground. He broke lots of important bones and was confined to a wheelchair for several months... All in all, he was really lucky to have survived. According to the word in our neighborhood (I don't know how true this is), one of the first things he said to friends when he awoke in the hospital was, "Did I bounce?"

I saw Kenneth recently at a memorial service for a mutual friend's father, and I was so glad to learn that he is not only up and about, but happily married and -- maybe somewhat astonishingly -- still rock-climbing. I'm sure that the wisdom of the mid-thirties (whatever that means) probably has him taking fewer blatant risks than he did a decade ago; but he still hasn't let that major setback keep him from doing what he loves.

Many of us spend our lives focused on making things happen: going to school, working, striving toward our goals. But I think an often-overlooked and absolutely critical quality of successful people is how they respond when things happen to them. It's how we respond in those moments when nothing is going as planned that reflects the flexibility and resiliency of our characters. And when those moments are high-stakes or very public, the pressure is even greater.

I'm thinking, for example, of professional ballplayers who blow a big game in front of millions of angry fans, or this unfortunate moment in the life of 2007 Miss Teen South Carolina. Of course that video leaves most educated folks shaking our heads (myself included!), but just think for a moment how nervous some of us get when we only have to make a short presentation to a conference room full of coworkers.

It's humiliating and scary moments like these that keep most of us away from the spotlight and from taking risks in general. But moments like these also define us. Big accidents, colossal failures, huge losses -- these are the stuff of life. They invite us to become stronger, smarter, braver, humbler, more gracious.... just generally better.

To bounce back well, we have to be flexible; and sometimes willing to let go of our old ideas and perspectives to adjust to a new reality. It's all about learning from failure, laughing after you fall down, allowing others to see you vulnerable and surviving it. Anyone can be a fortress, but it takes real courage to let others see you crumble and rebuild.

Miss Teen SC, incidentally, found the courage and good grace to poke fun at herself on another TV show not long after the "such as" fiasco, which in my mind is the best possible response after humiliating yourself on national television. She may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least she demonstrated the ability to bounce back smiling. Now somebody get that girl an atlas!