The Glass Castle: The Longest Simile to Resilience Human resilience is defined in Elizabeth Edwards’s quote, “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it 's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you 've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that 's good.” It has exemplified itself repeatedly throughout our existence on Earth, from the harsher, simpler days of survival, or how nations have fallen to dust after war or plagues or poverty and yet glued themselves back together in blatant refusal of defeat, or the struggle of the modern-day individual fighting through financial disasters or emotional loss. Challenges bore multiple faces across the centuries;
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“Don 't worry, God understands, ' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.” This quote from Wall’s book on page 105 reflects on the heaviest burden of the Walls’; Rex Walls. Everything depended on Rex, and though he did care about his family, he cared more about himself and his pleasures; his demons that he would never cease to fight. Rex took his frustrations out onto his family and work life, and hence could never provide enough to sustain a stable and healthy family lifestyle, but the children and Rose Mary, the mother, took everything with a sigh and the squaring of their shoulders to better accommodate the cross he’d built for them. The human race has had multiple crosses, whether them being people or situations; the hardest thing to do, and the most honorable aspect to their resilience, was not only enduring their crosses but loving them, just like the Walls’ loved their father, even through his abrupt decisions, his money losses, his verbal or physical beatings, his selfishly alcoholic tendencies and drunken decisions. Many people have had to maintain mercy and understanding for people they do not agree with, or even vaguely like, people like Rex Walls who corrode their emotions and self-worth, who are antagonistic and bitter, and kept walking with this demon on their shoulders and love it without fault. That is the true definition of resilience; to face hate everyday and give love in
“Don 't worry, God understands, ' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.” This quote from Wall’s book on page 105 reflects on the heaviest burden of the Walls’; Rex Walls. Everything depended on Rex, and though he did care about his family, he cared more about himself and his pleasures; his demons that he would never cease to fight. Rex took his frustrations out onto his family and work life, and hence could never provide enough to sustain a stable and healthy family lifestyle, but the children and Rose Mary, the mother, took everything with a sigh and the squaring of their shoulders to better accommodate the cross he’d built for them. The human race has had multiple crosses, whether them being people or situations; the hardest thing to do, and the most honorable aspect to their resilience, was not only enduring their crosses but loving them, just like the Walls’ loved their father, even through his abrupt decisions, his money losses, his verbal or physical beatings, his selfishly alcoholic tendencies and drunken decisions. Many people have had to maintain mercy and understanding for people they do not agree with, or even vaguely like, people like Rex Walls who corrode their emotions and self-worth, who are antagonistic and bitter, and kept walking with this demon on their shoulders and love it without fault. That is the true definition of resilience; to face hate everyday and give love in