My whole life, I’ve always been extremely curious.

This has led me to hurtle headlong towards learning about numerous pursuits (or as my wife calls them, “rabbit holes”) on all kinds of ridiculous topics (sorry about holding you hostage while I pontificated on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, honey!) because, to me, the main overarching hobby of mine is simply learning something new.

The past few years, I began to notice that many of my hobbies and rabbit holes all had one overarching theme in common — you could file them all under the umbrella of resilience. I realized that all of my disparate hobbies and interests like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, permaculture and aquaculture, urban design, backpacking, small business, the circular economy, fitness, and many more, could all be shoehorned under one (or more!) of three different spheres of building resilience — personal resilience, communal resilience, and societal resilience. Over the life of this blog, I hope to explore each of these spheres in turn and highlight examples from my own life, community, and areas of interest that highlight resilience — and teach others how to build resilience in themselves and those around them.

First, let’s get some definitions down. What do I mean by resilience? Resilience is not just the ability of an individual, community, and society to adapt and thrive in the face of challenges, but about their ability to lessen or avoid the negative consequences and impacts of challenges through strength and a coherent strategic vision to plan for any issues.

Perhaps this definition is impacted by the nearness of the Covid pandemic — a total shutdown of society that showcased an incredible lack of societal resilience from top to bottom and highlighted just how susceptible many of our social structures we take for granted really are when confronted by an outside force. However, while society on a grand scale languished, many people and local community organizations showed remarkable resilience— leading me to believe that there are different spheres of resilience that should be examined.

The first sphere is PERSONAL.

Personal resilience refers to the ability of individuals to perceive, withstand, and overcome obstacles. It encompasses a wide range of factors, including physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual wellbeing. I hope to explore the many ways to build personal resilience, by developing skills and habits such as fitness, connection with nature, exploring decision making frameworks, the science of curiosity, and more.

The second sphere is COMMUNAL.

Communal resilience refers to the ability of groups of people to be organized and structured in such a way that they lessen the impact of adversity, strengthen communal bonds, and thrive in the face of challenges. Topics might include strengthening families and neighborhoods, building strong bonds within the larger community, highlighting local businesses and institutions that are important to the future (and past!) of a community, fostering a sense of belonging and connection with the nearby natural environment, strong urban design, promoting local food systems, and more.

The third sphere is SOCIETAL.

Societal resilience involves adaptability and strength on a large scale when faced with global problems. These challenges can include things such as climate change and resource depletion, or even inflation, monetary policy, and other far reaching, future facing problems. For my purposes, it involves building strong and sustainable economic systems, promoting sustainable agriculture, and developing innovative solutions to environmental problems. I hope to showcase new technologies, large companies, interesting books, and thought leaders who look ahead, solving tough problems and making humanity more resilient as a whole.

This blog is intended to be more experimental and philosophical about the topic of resilience than a manifesto or call to arms. Its main intention is to meander slowly along, exploring many different facets of the three main pillars of resilience — personal, communal, and societal. I hope to introduce you to new concepts, inspiring people, and interesting thoughts that can fall under the resilience umbrella, and I hope that I’m introduced to some new ideas along the way too. I also hope that this is the last blog post I write in the first person!

If you have a company, person, book, or hobby that exemplifies resilience, please let me know. I’d love to examine it in greater detail.

Looking forward to exploring the topic of resilience with you all.