#92 - Bricolage of Life: Creating Possibilities From Limits

Last week I watched a documentary about Ben Underwood, a boy who lost his sight at the age of three but developed a remarkable ability to use echolocation to identify objects around him and function very well without the ability to see. Ben learned to walk, ride a bike, rollerblade and skateboard, play basketball and football, and climb trees without any major problems. According to his family, there were countless times when people didn’t believe him when he told them he was blind.

It reminds me a story of Izabela Dłużyk, which I described in an earlier post. She is also blind and became world known expert on birds and their sounds. In a very different way, they both managed to build unique skills to overcome their limitations.

Ben's story has some fascinating angles directly linked to resilience, in particular his resourcefulness and his relationship with his mother.

Lots of Resources or Resourceful?

There’s something I really like about the English word “resourceful.”

It doesn’t mean you have lots of resources, but rather describes your ability to cope with challenges in a clever way, using whatever is available. It doesn’t matter how many resources you have, what truly matters is your ability to use them. There's a lot of wisdom in the twisted meaning of that word.

It’s very close in meaning to the French word bricolage, which French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss used to describe how people in non-Western cultures cope with the lack of specialised knowledge and resources. It’s also described as a key capability of resilient individuals and organisations (Goleman et al., 2017).

Ben Underwood’s story is a great example of how much we can achieve if we focus on what we have, rather than constantly looking for more, or giving up because we think we need some special skills or assets to succeed. The human brain has a large capacity, far beyond our regular needs. That redundancy of power can really help when you need it most.

Inner Capabilities, Hard Work, or Environment?

After watching the film, a friend and I had one of those classic chicken-and-egg debates.

Who was the main driver of that miracle: Ben himself, or his mother, who believed in him deeply? She never accepted his limitations and worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help him adapt. So, how much of us is really us, and to what extent are we a product of our family, our environment, or even just luck?

I’ve already written quite a bit on this topic. It seems that believing in our own hard work, strong will, and the usual “you can achieve whatever you want if...” (insert motivational guru recipe here) is a bit naive. Statistics are much more brutal: the support network you have, the wealth of your family, and pure luck play a much larger role than we like to admit.

But at the same time, we do have some level of agency. Our fate isn’t written in stone, and it’s equally naive to see it that way. The middle ground may be to focus on the road, rather than specific objectives. Though external forces shape our paths in ways we can’t always control, our individual steps—like those taken by Ben or Izabela—are still our own. The road may not be fair, but we can still choose to walk it with intention.

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References and Notes

Goleman, D., Sonnenfeld, J. A., & Achor, S. (2017). Resilience (HBR emotional intelligence series). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind (G. Weidenfeld & N. Nicholson, Trans.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1962).

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