Bhavin Shukla

What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

In general, there are three types of persons.

Fragile, who are brittle, and prone to breaking when exposed to change or faced with challenges. Although they may have the strength of dinosaurs 🦕, they are incapable of adapting to change.

Robust and resilient, who are capable of fighting and overcoming challenges. They are typically the “rockstars” 🕺🏻💃🏻 and top performers 🔝 on a team.

The third kind of people are from the Antifragile breed, discussed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book “Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder”, who not only fights but also gains strength 💪 from chaos and disorder.

I believe I am antifragile, which to me is my strength.

Being Antifragile can be tiring at times, as you face challenge after challenge because you believe you are always above the fragile threshold, tearing you apart. However, the same process of wearing you down might let you kill your old self and start over, with a “new me”. Antifragility contributes in the departure of order, a defined framework, a set of beliefs, a past, and the entry into an unorderly chaos and the “unknown”.

The practice of stepping into the unknown is the ultimate freedom, freedom from fear.

It helps in getting rid of our own old-self, which is made up of one or more of our belief systems, a cast that makes us brittle and refuses to adapt.

As Mikhail Naimy, the famous Lebanese author, quoted in his book, The Book of Mirdad:

‘The brow of the rock is hard and steep.
The lap of the void is soft and deep.
The lion and the maggot,
The cedar and the fagot,
The rabbit and the snail,
The lizard and the quail,
The eagle and the mole –
All in one hole.
One hook. One bait.
Death alone can compensate.
As beneath, so on high –
Die to live, or live to die’.

If one wishes to “be” in the moment and in spontaneity, he or she must get rid of their past and destroy the old-self. We have a choice: live to die or die after each moment to live.

Do you think that living in disorder and chaos has the potential of overwhelming us, or the spontaneous living can work as an antidote in helping us overcome fragility? Would love to know on what do you think?

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