Did you know that every 30 minutes you complain about problems, your problem solving neurones are passing away? That sounds incredible, but still dramatically true. The worst comes thinking that is not just one person, or two, or four people to have this kind of attitude. It is a sort of epidemic disease that brings people, and consequently the society, to complain when a crisis comes up. Why? Because complaining is just easier.
We could say, as many already know, that word “crisis” has a double meaning, especially for the oriental cultures tradition. It means at same time “risk” and “opportunity”. Indeed, as history teaches us, when a situation arrives at its caos point and consequently to its saturation point, something has to change. At this moment, creativity and resilience take the stage. Nevertheless, without going deep in linguistic research, it is already illustrative itself the fact that when you complain, instead of having a problem solving predisposition, makes part of you literally dying.
The crisis is part of our lives. Our grandparents had to face the war, our parents had to deal with the cold war and the flared trousers (and this explain many things). Anyway, our task is to deal with the crises whether you like it or not. The financial crises, the political crises, the economic crises, the security crises, the social one, the food security one, the communitarian, the job market, youth employment, the citizen participation, the public administration ones. So the next question I have is: do you want part of yourselves to die? Do we want to die? I can hazard a guess that the answer is no.
Therefore, now it is maybe the right moment for us to take confidence with the word “resilience”. Yes, because it seems that we have got used to the term “crisis”, even with its Asiatic meaning, but not the one, which explain how to get the opportunity. Resilience is the ability of a system to adapt to change. If we want to be more specific, just to better understand, we could say that:
- In computer science, resilience is the ability of a system to adapt to the conditions of use and resist wear in order to guarantee the availability of the services provided.
- In ecology, resilience is the ability of a living material to repair itself after a damage, or that of a community or an ecosystem to return to its initial state after being subjected to a disturbance, which amended that state.
- Inpsychology, resiliencyis the abilityto respondpositivelyto thetraumatic eventsofhis lifepositivelyrearrangethe face of difficulties.
If it sounds good, it is better to know that from July 27th to August 1st, at Macomer, a little city in Sardinia (Italy) there will be the Festival of Resilience 2015. A group aged 20 to 30 years, all over Italy and the world, students and workers, realists and dreamers, has created the Propositivo project, which promotes the Festival. They have the intent to highlight the many examples of virtuous practices present on the territory, which share a vision of reality with a positive, innovative, sustainable and resilient attitude. The Festival will be focused on Sardinia territory. This trip will affect specifically the territory of Marghine-Planargia. This year the Festival aims to put together a team of experts at national level that can dialogue with the territory of central Sardinia and its protagonists, looking for new ideas to recover the local economy, rural tourism, participation and open government, in a resilient way. They want to start launching their project “Brainsurfing”: a week of traveling brainstorming to find the best proposal, which will be spread through the Festival and turned into concrete projects through the direct involvement of citizens.
The festival will provide:
- The realization of BrainSurfing: a meeting between brainstorming and couchsurfing, involving local professionals under 35 to talk about the territory to national experts. During the week of traveling meetings between Macomer and Bosa, they will discover the critical issues and new projects for the Marghine and Sardinia;
- A presentation to the population of the results obtained through the Brainsurfing;
- Workshops through the sharing of outcomes on how to implement the projects arised;
- The involvement of local producers and innovators on Sardinian issues and the pread of their initiatives;
- The creation of two days of cultural activities, theatrical, literary, musical and multimedia events.
6 days to get involved in what is our, in what is about us. 6 days to remember that we do have a brain and neurons that are actually made to create ideas, to make thing going better. If complaining is an epidemic disease, it is also true that resilience is a cure as much contagious as the crises is. Having a resilient attitude is not easy, for sure, but it is powerful. The kind of things that scares usually complains, which makes afraid that everything could really change. However, the very important thing to think about is: what will happen, if nothing changes?