Books. The Antifragile.

Tonight I finished Justin Cronin's The Passage. The longest novel I've read in a long time. An exciting book. Virals, Dracs, Smokes, Vampires. Whatever you want to call them. It was a world inhabited by horrible beings that wanted to eat you alive, and maybe, if you were (un)lucky, turn you into one of them. It was a world in which people struggled to stay alive, to love, to reproduce, to continue the process of civilization.

Soon I hope to begin Nassim Taleb's book, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.

In the past months I've recently recognized myself as a fragile person. I don't deal well with uncertainty. I cling to certainty and stability. I break easily.

I am fragile.

I saw Taleb speak the other day. He claimed that most people think that the opposite of fragility is robustness or resiliency. Taleb, however, believes that this is an inaccurate dichotomy  and that we are really dealing with a triad. We have the fragile (which breaks under stress), the robust (which stays stable despite stress), and the antifragile (which gains and grows from stress).

A box of fragile goods will be labeled 'Fragile: Handle With Care'. The opposite of that fragility, therefore, would be 'Antifragile: Please Misuse'.

I am a fragile person.

I want to become an antifragile person.

I don't yet know how.

I've been meditating somewhat frequently.

Most of my writing has been poetry.

I'm trying to get closer to my emotions.

But I don't yet know how to become antifragile.

I don't know how to gain from stress and disorder.

This is not a purely intellectual task, obviously.

I will continue to meditate, reflect, and build a healthy relationship with my therapist.

But I also hope to pursue the intellectual element of this by reading Antifragile.

Hopefully I'll have some thoughts about it in the coming weeks.

In the mean time, I'll say, 'Worrying? Fear? Ain't nobody got time for that.'