What lies beyond resilience

Mention the word resilience in regional communities at your own risk.

Anyone who has lived through the natural disasters of recent years will have experienced the word from every angle and even though disaster recovery isn’t his realm, nobody calls it better than Mark Tan;

“Resilience is a dirty word. It is an overused, poorly understood utterance which appears to consist of a blasphemous, hollow cacophony of yoga, coffee vouchers and mindfulness training.”

Why do regional residents take such offence when asked, urged, funded and mandated to be resilient?

Well, let’s put the malignant drone of the word aside for a moment.

Conceptually, when we hear of resilience among individuals and communities, it is generally about their ability to bounce back, or improve their ability to bounce back. And bounce back quickly.

Perhaps this was OK once upon a time when ‘normal’ was attainable (presuming that the idea is to bounce back to “normal”).

Quite frankly.

“Normal” or even the “Normal 2.0” suggests that we can cast our aim for a solid, stable, understandable platform that neatly encapsulates our existence. The convenience of any version of normal is that it’s predictable, safe and comfortable.