Resilience vs. readiness

"One who, prepared, awaits the unprepared will win."
- Sun Tzu

Resilience is a popular term these days. It connotes the ability to withstand or bounce back from tough situations. To keep one's head, one's composure, even in the face of crisis.

While resilience may be an important attribute to have, the Sun Tzu Way is ultimately not a philosophy of resilience. Rather, it is a philosophy of readiness.

Readiness involves the ability not simply to withstand tough situations, but to anticipate them - and to use them essentially to determine one's response.

For Sun Tzu, this quality is crucial in war. It is not enough for an army simply to bounce back from a bad situation. To keep its head when times are tough. That may keep the army in the fight, but it is not enough to secure its victory.

Rather, the army, led by a wise general, must be prepared to respond in all types of situations. This is why Sun Tzu details so many different scenarios in The Art of War -  from easy situations where the army has a clear advantage to vague situations where it is difficult to get a read on what's going on to seemingly dangerous situations where it seems like there is no option but to fight, even to death.

It is through understanding these different possibilities and knowing how and when to respond that the army is ready to use every situation as a means to secure total victory (quan sheng). 

In life, the same idea is true. Being resilient is not enough for you to achieve a sense of security (an). It's not enough to able to withstand or bounce back from a bad situation. You must learn to anticipate danger or risk, to prepare for it, to know how to respond a situation so that you end up in a better place than before.

It's not just about keeping your head; it's about using it to get ahead.