Resilience & Creativity: Becoming the "Bell"​

In the poem "Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower" from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29, Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote:

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower, and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

This poem got me thinking about resilience. I have the honor to witness these moments with my coaching clients, the majority of whom come to me when they are on the precipice of or amidst a great change.

That moment of becoming the bell, as Rilke says, is a moment of profound freedom borne from the depths of pain and anguish. I’ve always wondered about the magic behind those transformative moments.

When we think about our lives, how many times have we let the darkness be the bell? How many times have we become the bell tower? How many times have we given up the vibrational potential of our own resilient bodies and souls to a soul-enveloping darkness?

The more I think about these moments of transformation, the more I think that they are not a product of magic, but rather are borne of our very human ability to create, to channel, and dispossess ourselves of the darkness.

Acts of resilience require creative energy. Our ability to transform our trauma into healing and failure into innovation sparks a creative process that is required to build something new out of the wreckage.

Whether you’re recalibrating after a major life event, or forging a new career path out of a soul-sucking one (The Great Resignation is real), we are all presented with the unique opportunity to ask “what new type of bravery or boldness is required from me to start again?”

We often find ourselves feeling the most incapable of being bold or brave in these moments, which elucidates their transformative potential. With nothing left but old tools that have failed us, we forge a new tool, sharpened by a need to survive and thrive. Or we generate a new feeling, one that holds new energy that has been accruing over time, like a neurological token embedded in our cerebellum whose value has subconsciously accumulated with each dark season of our life.

I love the end of Rilke’s poem because it perfectly encapsulates how that transformation is often borne from that feeling of hitting bottom. Even when the “world ceases to hear you,” you affirm the energy of your existence to the “silent earth.” Speaking not to be heard, but speaking to simply be.

Failure or profound loss can feel like death. Death of who we were, who we wanted to be. In the cyclical nature of life itself, new life emerges from loss. Like a snake shedding her skin, she emerges anew.

Thankfully, resilience is an infinite source, a capacity waiting to be extricated from the depths of our souls even in those moments of profound pain, drawing from wells we never even knew we had.

We are living in an era of extreme trauma, the effects of which we may not see until years to come. We are facing such major crises-- from a global pandemic to racial injustice to climate change-- it's a wonder that we're all still standing. It's in that wonder and awe of existing in spite of it all where resilience can be channeled from unspeakable pain.

What wells of strength and resilience lie dormant within you?

What skins do you need to shed to become the next iteration of your most powerful self?

How are you going to become the bell?

What other metaphors feel aligned to your experiences of building resilience?

To what extent might these metaphors become blueprints for the future cultivation of resilience?