A week ago, the word “resilience” might have conjured in my imagination a bowlegged toddler running down the sidewalk, colliding with gravity, and pushing herself back up, scraped knees and all.

Suddenly I am thinking of resilience more expansively. It is every one of us who made it through last year — and, yes, last week — renewing daily our commitment to carry on. Resilience now conjures something as deep and wide as American democracy, maimed but still breathing, still marching.

Resilience is individual and communal. It is the collective decision that what we have inherited — “a republic if we can keep it” — is worth preserving. Resilience is not knowing how to proceed in the face of an unthinkable situation, but committing to figuring it out. It is stepping forward without knowing if you can save what must be saved, or if you have the strength to. Resilience is my friend spending the weekend writing letter after letter to the nation’s elected representatives demanding simply that they tell the truth, because she needed to say that.

Resilience is opening the shutters in the morning and being comforted at the sight of the trees and sky still there.

Resilience is seeking out wisdom, like: “Fall down seven times, stand up eight,” and this excerpt from Optimism, by Helen Keller, found in one of my favorite resources, Brainpickings.

Keller wrote,

I know what evil is. Once or twice I have wrestled with it, and for a time felt its chilling touch on my life; so I speak with knowledge when I say that evil is of no consequence, except as a sort of mental gymnastic. For the very reason that I have come in contact with it, I am more truly an optimist. I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.“

Resilience is foundational. Resilience is a struggle. Resilience is an act of faith.

May we remember that resilience is in us.