Irene Montero's former professor and the resilience trap

Irene Montero's former professor and resilience as privilege

His advice sounds like truth: change your life, take a sabbatical year, do a course, quit the job that's suffocating you. But the retired university professor who taught Irene Montero in her younger years is getting more criticism than praise. And not for what he says, but for where he says it from.

Some listen to him with respect: a free man, unencumbered, speaking from experience. Others see a parasite of the system with a premium pension urging gullible people to throw their lives overboard. The criticism is sharp: resilience, that discourse of "gruel for dinner and grab the bull by the horns," does not cure OCD or chronic pain. And those who preach it from a position of economic security fail to understand that the one still on the boat does not always choose to cut loose.

Behind the squabble lies a deeper discomfort. When "the mess that's coming our way" is on the table, self-help sounds like resilience garbage, like pushing the individual to shoulder alone what should be a collective problem. The professor has an advantage he fails to mention: a guaranteed public salary. Someone drawing a premium pension can afford to stare down the daily grind; someone living paycheck to paycheck cannot.

The debate will go on as long as that gap exists between those who preach change and those who have no safety net. The next time a retiree with a guaranteed pension drops a motivational pearl, the response will be predictable: truth, depending on how you look at it, weighs differently depending on your bank balance. And that gap does not look like it will close any time soon.