Where did our resolve go?

Off Topic
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I know this is probably inspired by the impending lockdown that’s coming but rather than have it disappear into the quagmire of armchair experts, I’m putting it out here in general terms.

In my life, I’ve had a tone of adversity, from an expensive, emotional divorce ( I came home and my house was stripped clean, wife, kids and money all gone), to multiple surgeries and an inability to walk. Money troubles, relationship troubles, work stress and a host of others that many here will relate to.

Most of these have dealt whilst living 12,000 miles from any family support or physical network. You are own your own when you emigrate to the other side of the world. No comfy EU, 2 hrs flight to go home, you’ve cut that apron string to a very large degree.

Now, given everything life has thrown at me, especially spine wise, and the above mention situation, I tend to deal with things pretty well when adversity strikes. I did have a wobble about being unemployable earlier this year and was buoyed by many a supportive comment here, thank you all.

But all the time I hear phrases like ‘oh I could never live far from my parents, who would babysit’? or ‘ I never look at my car, I take it to my Dad’. And a host of others, you know what I’m getting at.

It seems like we are losing the ability to deal with any kind of adversity at all? I see posts from people saying they can’t ‘deal’ with situations which would have me just shrugging my shoulders and getting on with life.

We seem so ill equipped to roll with the punches these days?

I should add. I’m not talking about being all ‘John Wayne’ and not showing any kind on of emotion or empathy. I’m talking about being completely incapable of rolling some sleeves up.

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Just depends guess, on what people are used to. My brother & SiL have always stayed very close to home and enjoyed those ‘benefits’. We have never lived near family, and my parents are getting old now anyway. Our days of getting away together (sans kids) are done now until they are old enough to be left alone. So at least another 6-7 years.

Fuck. Put that way I’m now depressed. Thanks FP :sweat_smile:

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I’m not sure it’s a question of resolve or resilience. I think now, and even more in “these times”, you don’t have to go away to work anymore. There are a lot of families where one parent works away 2/3/4 nights a week, the housing and jobs market just mean it’s completely impractical to shift the whole family for a job that definitely isn’t for life anymore.

It is still happening though, people are moving about, but it’s a family cultural thing. My mum and 2 of her 3 brothers all worked overseas for a time. Now in our generation I’d say we’ve all moved, some cousins less than others but definitely a minimum of a stint of a couple of years somewhere else before returning.

As I’ve mentioned before the juxtaposition of the lives of my partner and I versus his ex-wife’s is stark so it will be an interesting study to see what the kids end up doing. We’ve got no fear of being somewhere new - if we have to we will. My stepson is paralysed with fear around change. HOWEVER he has coped amazingly well with changing to high school and all the upheaval of the last year. So I think he’s resilient he just doesn’t take time to stop and think about he’s done.

But then in every sector of society there are those that don’t even venture into the next suburb. The series on BBC ‘Manctopia’ is quite an interesting insight into those kind of attitudes.

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I’m not just talking about living away though. There seems to be a complete lack of resolve these days to deal with any adversity. Everything becomes a drama to be shared on SM instead of just dealing with it.

Nothing gets things done like doing stuff does!

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Really, this is just a ‘spill over’ from the CV-19 thread. I know you’ve been avoiding that thread, so I would say that caution should be exercised, as there has been a lot on that thread you’ve missed over the last 7 months.

We had an instance recently where there was some generalised name calling, to which no-one reacted. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t misplaced, given what I’ve said above.

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We lived right near those Capital & Centric ones, on New Islington Marina.
We spoke to the housing association tenants opposite us, they got royally screwed over by the developers.
One lady gave us Maltesers at Christmas and brought us over a rose cutting, as we kept out front garden nice.
When we moved, we took it with us and still have it :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Some people are afraid of change.
Others embrace it.

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Why do people have to though? Would you wish your divorce and struggles on anyone? Yes, it’s made you a better person for it. You wouldn’t have achieved what you’d achieved without the motivation to do it. But who knows if you’d have not done the same without the trials.

My life’s hardships have made me the focussed, determined person I am today. But would I wish an alcoholic father, poverty, bullying, endless house moves on another kid, absolutely not! If people can live the calm, undisturbed life where the biggest “crisis” is “OMG that woman looked at me funny and now she’s trolling me” and it plays out on social media then lucky them.

All about perspective isn’t it. Also humans are funny, even those people where a broken nail is a crisis will surprise you and come out of broken marriages, job losses etc etc even if it’s the last thing you expect them to be able to do.

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These are just general musings and all to be read in a calm and kind voice. I often wonder if my family would be the same if my dad had held it together. He didn’t so it’s just random Saturday afternoon thoughts rather than bitterness. Life is a strange thing isn’t it?

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Schools have become more aware of this and learning resilience is something that is featuring more heavily in PSHE curriculums. I believe that we do learn to be more resilient, but like you say FP, you have to experience failure, rejection and difficulty to learn how to cope. Personally, I’ve had a few things to deal with in my life, mainly in my teens and 20s which while pretty shite at the time helped me deal with things later on. Nothing compared to what a lot of other people have gone through and are going through at the moment. I did have to peel my two teenagers off the ceiling on Thursday when I told them we wouldn’t have any broadband for the next week. They both completely lost it. TBH, it did upset me at how easily they lost complete perspective about the situation.

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Because society will grind to a halt in 100 years if people don’t. It’s not about my divorce, it’s just about people’s ability to deal with stuff.

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It’s not a spill over from at all. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

when Trump was elected, I was working briefly for a charity. It was meant to be am A political origination. Was it fuck, people were losing their shit, as the Cameron bunfight had also started. They were crying, over a bloody election 4000 miles away! And yet, here we are, still going about life as generally normal in that regard, at least in the UK.

I’ve been musing the pros and cons of becoming debt free, ie, slamming into my mortgage hard and paying it off. It lead me to some debt strategy forums and from there I went down the rabbit hole of Debtfreewannabee on MSE. I was staggered by people’s inability to read contracts, take responsibility and handle bad situations.

I used to hear people talk at work, especially the younger generation about what constituted a drama in their lives and think, fuck me dead, you’re clueless about what a real crisis is.

But I’m sure I’m wrong and will get told a million ways to Sunday why that is. :laughing:

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I guess life is just not as ‘simple’ as it was when we and our parents were kids. People are bombarded with a lot more now. This is the society we have created for kids now. Two words: MOBILE INTERNET.

The only way to escape it is to go and live on a desert island.

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That’s my point though. Getting bombarded by it ( let’s say marketing, mobile phones ) doesn’t compel you to react to it. We have the ability to say ‘no’ or ‘yes’ depending on the situation. Phones have an off switch.

I remember reading how there was global shortage of submariner recruits because people can’t deal with being disconnected. I don’t know if it was true but makes some sense.

Part of it could be the need for validation I guess. I dunno.

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They have always had trouble getting submariners; because you are disconnected from a lot more than just the Internet or self validation.

Guys are coming off subs needing glasses because their distance vision has vanished, for example. A metal tube that reeks of diesel & sweat, with no respite, daylight or fresh air. They make a winter in the Falklands look like Shangri La.

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Yeah I guess so. I think it’s one of the reasons I’m keen to get a Little One into the wild, camping, trail running and in the surf. It’s not a cure but I’m hoping she will see another side of life that gives her situations to deal with.

With the audience here, we probably have a fair bit of resolve purely from being involved in endurance events.

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This & also the fact we are mostly all of an age were we have had our own life experiences to build up some resilience/perspective.

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I was thinking about this, after a comment on another thread about “communications strategy”
The last time Labour were in power, Instagram hadn’t even been invented.
3G mobile was (2009) only just coming to a mass audience at the end of their tenure.
Rolling news wasn’t “a thing”
The past decade has seen an information explosion, which has (IMO) desensitised people one way, but made them sensitive in other ways.

:twocents:

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I was also mulling this over in the car this afternoon, thinking someone would mention it;

To me, I just quit :see_no_evil:

Endurance sport has taught me that nobody gives a shit about you doing a race in 10 hours.
They just want you mentally, physically and emotionally available when they need you.
And that it’s your job that pays the bills, not your hobby.

Oh!
One term at Uni, I literally had zero cash.
So I bought a 25kg bag of spuds, 10kg of onions and some beef stock.
I ate nothing but boiled potatoes, frozen broccoli and gravy for around six weeks.
My housemate took pity on me sometimes and gave me some cheese to have with it.
That took some bloody resolve

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Exactly.

We run the risk of being those “it wasn’t like that in my day” types, who can be just as dangerous. We’re quick to say there isn’t much around to build resilience in the younger generations but I actually think this social media lifestyle is affecting the 40/50+ generation more.

The change to working from home nearly destroyed a few of my colleagues in March. You’d have though that with the changes in their 30-40 year careers they’d have been fine, but no, it has really unsettled them. The youngsters, limited impact and they’ve all got us older lot together and moving in the right direction.

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But you experienced the endurance events that gave you that perspective. It’s not about being tough and it’s not about being old. It’s a mindset of just getting with stuff and learning to adjust your sails as you go.

I’ve lost count of the amount of people that have said tome ‘ I couldn’t have had a child at your age’. Of course they could haveif they wanted to. We wanted to, so we did. It’s that simple. Not easy but simple.

As for the comment about the older generation being more affected, maybe. I’m 55 and just learning about modern parents nights, primary schools, number bonding, and cursive writing ( don’t get me started!).

It’s just another thing to be overcome.

There was a lady I worked with at Voda, she was early 30s, she was buying her house ( 2nd house she had owned) and had some issues with the legal and the the removal dates got changed but nothing earth shattering. When she was in she said she was never moving house again wanted her life to be exactly as it was now because moving house wS too stressful.

32yrs old and you vow never to move or have any sense of change? That struck me as being extremely sad.

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