Adversity is defined as adverse or unfavorable fortune or fate; a condition marked by misfortune, calamity, or distress. We sometimes think of it in extreme terms, from all the media centred around tragedy and our brains' predisposition to gravitate to bad news. But quite simply, adversity is life. To believe you could go through a life without some pain or suffering, is unrealistic, and a toxic narrative that some do try to weave on social media.

And yet, the fact that we’re here today, talking on the tools we are, have food in our fridges, running water, are adversities our forebears survived so we wouldn’t have to. Yet the struggles never end. As with the pandemic since last year, many people have been affected greatly as we discussed in our last talk, some of which had their livelihoods disrupted or taken away completely. And, depending on many factors of where you live, what your culture is, or the colour of your skin has levels of adversity some of us have never had to experience or might not fully understand.

Then looking at resilience, which definition was apt in how it contracts to dealing with adversity, that resilience is the ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes. Another word given to this meaning was buoyancy. The concept that, no matter what happens, no matter the depths of chance, injustice, or struggle one faces, that they will always float back up to the top, and keep moving on about their lives in spite of all that.