How To Be Antifragile

From Glass to Diamond

If I were to take a glass bowl and send it to a friend in the mail for a gift, I would have to mark the box as “Fragile – Handle With Care.” If I don’t the gift doesn’t make it to my friend in one piece.

Now instead of sending a fragile gift to my friend, I decide to send something the opposite of fragile. When asked to describe the opposite of fragile, most people use words such as robust, strong, and durable. However, saying that the opposite of fragile is robust is like saying that the opposite of negative is neutral. In fact the opposite of negative is positive. In like manner, the opposite of fragile is not robust but is a term called antifragile[1].

So if I were to put a wooden bowl in a box we would say the bowl is robust. Shaking the box around doesn’t damage the bowl. Something robust remains unchanged in the midst of stressors.

Antifragility would be the equivalent of putting something in the box like glass. And after kicking the box, mishandling the box, the glass would get stronger and turn into a diamond.  Something antifragile actually improves and gets better when stress, volatility and chaos are applied.

Turns out this property of antifragility is found everywhere in life including physics, biology, engineering, economics, policy-making and others. Here are a few applications.

Banker vs Taxi Driver

A banker works from 9-5 PM Monday through Friday and gets a paycheck every 2 weeks. There’s no volatility. There’s no randomness. It’s very predictable. The banker is considered fragile because if the bank fails then the person is out of a job. On the hand, a taxi driver doesn’t have a dependable paycheck. He is dependent on his customers. Sometimes he’s paid $120, other times just $20. It’s more random. However, he is more adaptable and can travel elsewhere if the local economy goes bad.  The taxi driver is antifragile.

Muscles

Muscles are antifragile. They gain from disorder, stressors, and randomness. If your muscles don’t experience any stress they weaken and atrophy. If you’re not sure of this, just ask someone who’s been hospitalized and bedridden for 3 days. They feel like they have to learn to walk all over again. When you exercise, your muscles actually undergo micro tears. The muscle fibers break down. During rest the muscles undergo a process called hypertrophy – they repair and become stronger than the previous state.

Antifragility in religion

I’ve wondered if this concept of antifragility can be found in religion. Do we have any examples of something in the Bible that is antifragile? Something or someone that becomes stronger in the midst of adversity? There are many examples, but one of the main characters I think about is the Apostle Paul – someone who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament and laid foundational doctrines such as justification, sanctification and the divinity of Jesus.

Was Paul fragile or antifragile?

In 2 Corinthians 11:24, 25 we read:

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea.

Paul certainly has his share of stressors, randomness and volatility. Those events didn’t only make him stronger, he also had a closer walk with God. See what Paul wrote as a result of his experiences in Philippians 4:11-13:

I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: ¹² I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. ¹³ I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Paul knew that at the center of his antifragility what Christ. It was Christ that made him antifragile. Christ that made it so not only would he withstand stressors, he would become stronger as a result.

Absorbing Bullets

I was having a difficult day at the office. I was upset at my staff for not getting things right and it was getting to me. Then God rebuked me with a patient.

She was a young woman with black pants, black top and a nose ring.  Her features were striking. I learned she had a drug problem in the past but now had been clean and sober for 2 years. She actually had started going to church and was walking with Jesus. In fact, she said been working at her new job making airplane parts for Lockheed Martin. She came into my office because her daughter caught her smoking in the car. She had opened the passenger door to see her Mom smoking and said,  “Mommy, Mommy. Smoking is killing you. Please stop. I love you.” I’ve found that for smokers, there’s a tipping point at which they find can no longer continue the habit. This patient had found hers.

While I noted how much she had changed in such a short time, it was her story of domestic violence that has stayed with me. Her ex-husband, now in jail, shot her twice. The first bullet missed. The second bullet would have hit her in the chest had she not moved. Instead she turned her body and the bullet went into her left arm. In fact, she still had the bullet in her body. On exam, I palpated a one-centimeter hard mass on the anterior shoulder. The bullet had entered through the back side of her arm, missed important structures such as bones, nerves and arteries and stopped short of exiting her arm. She found that the bullet actually didn’t bother her so the doctors gave her the option of leaving it in or taking it out. I won’t forget what she said next.

“I leave it in there so I won’t forget.”

Here I was frustrated and angry about small details my staff wasn’t getting right. Meanwhile, the woman in front of me was getting shot and absorbing a bullet.

That bullet didn’t harm her, it strengthened her. Getting shot, just made her antifragile.

Conclusion

Today, I’m thinking about the adversity the Apostle Paul and this young woman went through. I’m thinking about how Christ can strengthen me to withstand any difficulty. And perhaps one day, by grace, I’ll be able to absorb bullets.

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[1] A term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book entitled Antifragility: Things that Gain From Disorder