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How Resilience Works 6

Ritualized Ingenuity 1

The third building block of resilience is the ability to make do with whatever is at hand. Psychologists follow the lead of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss in calling this skill bricolage.1 Intriguingly, the roots of that word are closely tied to the concept of resilience, which literally means “bouncing back.” Says Levi-Strauss: “In its old sense, the verb bricoler…was always used with reference to some extraneous movement: a ball rebounding, a dog straying, or a horse swerving from its direct course to avoid an obstacle.”

Bricolage in the modern sense can be defined as a kind of inventiveness, an ability to improvise a solution to a problem without proper or obvious tools or materials. Bricoleurs are always tinkering—building radios from household effects or fixing their own cars. They make the most of what they have, putting objects to unfamiliar uses. In the concentration camps, for example, resilient inmates knew to pocket pieces of string or wire whenever they found them. The string or wire might later become useful—to fix a pair of shoes, perhaps, which in freezing conditions might make the difference between life and death.

When situations unravel, bricoleurs muddle through, imagining possibilities where others are confounded. I have two friends, whom I’ll call Paul Shields and Mike Andrews, who were roommates throughout their college years. To no one’s surprise, when they graduated, they set up a business together, selling educational materials to schools, businesses, and consulting firms. At first, the company was a great success, making both founders paper millionaires. But the recession of the early 1990s hit the company hard, and many core clients fell away. At the same time, Paul experienced a bitter divorce and a depression that made it impossible for him to work. Mike offered to buy Paul out but was instead slapped with a lawsuit claiming that Mike was trying to steal the business. At this point, a less resilient person might have just walked away from the mess. Not Mike. As the case wound through the courts, he kept the company going any way he could—constantly morphing the business until he found a model that worked: going into joint ventures to sell English-language training materials to Russian and Chinese companies. Later, he branched off into publishing newsletters for clients. At one point, he was even writing video scripts for his competitors. Thanks to all this bricolage, by the time the lawsuit was settled in his favor, Mike had an entirely different, and much more solid, business than the one he had started with.

灵活变通 1

复原力的第三个要素是灵活变通的能力，即尽可能利用所拥有的一切资源应对困境的能力。心理学家跟随法国人类学家克洛德·列维-斯特劳斯(Claude Levi-Strauss)的叫法，把这种技能称为bricolage（用手头现有材料创作的能力）。有趣的是，这个词的词根与复原力这个概念紧密相关，复原力的字面意思是反弹回原来的状态。列维-斯特劳斯说:“动词bricoler的旧意总是用来指一些外部的运动，如：球的反弹，或一匹马为避开障碍偏离它原来的直线线路。”

Bricolage在现代意义上可以被定义为一种创造力，一种即兴解决问题的能力，没有适当的或明显的工具材料。Bricoleurs（拥有用手头现有材料创作能力的人）总是在修理-从用家里的东西来做收音机，或者修理自己的汽车。他们最大限度地利用他们所拥有的东西，把东西用在不熟悉的地方。例如，在集中营里，意志坚强的犯人知道，文论何时发现绳子或铁丝，他们都会把它们装进自己的口袋里。绳子或铁丝也许以后可以用来固定一双鞋，也许这在极冷的天气下可以决定他们的生死。

当情况不明朗时，bricoleurs就会蒙混过关，想象其他人感到困惑的可能性。我有两个朋友，我叫他们保罗·希尔兹(Paul Shields)和迈克·安德鲁斯(Mike Andrews)，他们在大学期间是室友。毕业后，他们一起创办了一家公司，向学校、企业和咨询公司出售教育材料。起初，这家公司取得了巨大的成功，两位创始人都成了账面上的百万富翁。但上世纪90年代初的经济衰退给公司带来了沉重打击，许多核心客户都流失了。与此同时，保罗还经历了痛苦的离婚和抑郁，这使他无法工作。迈克提出买断保罗的股份，但这却使他背上了一场官司，保罗声称迈克是想抢走公司的生意。在这种情况下，一个缺乏复原力的可能还处在混乱中，更别说继续管理公司了。迈克则不是一个缺乏复原力的人。随着案件在审理的进行，他想尽一切办法让公司继续发展，直到他发现了一个行之有效的商业模式:成立合资企业，向俄罗斯和中国的公司出售英语培训材料。后来，他开始为客户出版时事通讯。有一段时间，他甚至在为他的竞争对手写视频脚本。多亏了这一切，在这场官司对他有利的时候，迈克也有了一个完全不同的、更可靠的生意。

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