Resilience needs focus and remembering your goals, but also power to adapt and take the longer way sometimes

Wishing you much strength and flexibility. Resilience needs focus and remembering your goals, but also power to adapt and take the longer way sometimes when there is still time.

I think I imagine that my message is addressed, of course, to people of different ages and various backgrounds. But I also thought about youth and I have been trying to remember myself when I was younger and this feeling of urgency. And I think when it comes to youth today, they very legitimately feel an urgency to act and to change things very, very strongly. And it’s true. We’re running out of time. I don’t need to say why, and I don’t think we need to talk about the reasons for this. But I also feel that every inch that you take back from the powers and every small change or big change that you achieve needs a certain way of strategizing, of looking at the bigger picture and sometimes of being patient or knowing when to act, choosing your fights.

You know, there’s a lot of strategy. I think throughout the years I realized we have to be very strategic and as much as we need to be radical and everything has to be, it has to happen now because otherwise there’s no time. I think nevertheless, within that urgency, we still need to think strategically and we need to understand all sorts of issues and all sorts of entanglements and all sorts of connections and to try to also accept compromise. And I think we also need to be, as I said, quite flexible. That’s why I try to also bring some more flexibility and taking the longer way and working within this relational mess. Because otherwise we risk to become very rigid. And I don’t think we can achieve things with rigidity. Radicality, yes. Yeah, our goal needs to be remembered. But how you arrive at your goal, I think, is another question. And I think as much as we can still give time, I think we can still be strategic and devious as nerves, to quote Ursula Leguin.