Weird week this week, Friends.
It started with news of a bridge being accidentally hit by a cargo ship and collapsing in Baltimore.
It ended with me thinking about the difference between what we perceive as strong versus what proves to be resilient.
Let’s start with the bridge.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, named after the man who composed the “Star Spangled Banner,” was opened in 1977, cost over $220 million to build, and carried over 12.5 million vehicles annually. The main section of the bridge was what they call a “continuous truss bridge” and it was the third longest span of it’s kind in the world.
By the way, this enormous span had just two main support columns that kept it standing.
Went it opened, as the Washington Post recalled this week, it was “welcomed as yet more proof of the city’s ambition, its engineering prowess and its economic might.”
The bridge was strong. Some would say it was majestic. Most expected it could maybe last forever.
Then, on an relatively ordinary day, a 948 foot cargo vessel carrying nearly 4,700 shipping containers headed for Sri Lanka unexpectedly lost power and was unable to regain steering capabilities upon leaving the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest shipping ports of it’s kind in the world.
The ship was moving at just 9 miles per hour when it lost engine control but it takes the distance of up to a mile for a carrier of that size to come to a complete stop.
With no steering and the course it was on, a collision was pretty much unavoidable. It took three minutes following the initial mayday signal for the vessel to make direct impact with one of the two support columns.
If you watched the video, it was horrific. I can only imagine how it must have felt to be a close bystander witnessing it unfold in real time. For those who have seen or regularly driven over the span, it was probably like how those of us in the New York area felt watching the World Trade Center crumble to the ground.
As one expert said afterward “the boat strike took a bridge with two supports and took away one of them and then it fell in the water…I mean, doesn't seem to be super more complicated than that.”
And just like that….a majestic 47 year old bridge that was meant to last forever collapsed. It may have been strong, but it was not resilient enough to absorb that one, perfectly placed, accidental heavy blow.
We humans like to marvel at things that seem strong, don’t we?
We look at the size, the bulk, the cost, the bravado and the majesty of things and think “Wow, that is impressive.” We often imply from what we observe that these things MUST be strong — and their strength, their power and their sheer might MUST be sustainable and everlasting.
Think about it — think about those majestic structures you have seen or encountered in your life. The larger than life people. The powerful leaders. The “smartest” thinkers in the room. The successful organizations. The formidable competitors.
To the casual observer they look strong — but are they resilient?
Can they take a well timed, perfectly placed heavy blow from an equally strong object?
Can they withstand adversity? Can they adapt to changing conditions? Or do things have to be just perfect for their strength to be maintained?
Do they have a solid foundation or are they simply held up by just a couple of support columns?
Are they relentless? Or will they collapse at the first big impact?
As former heavyweight boxing champion, convicted felon, recovering drug addict and now podcaster Mike Tyson is often quoted as saying :
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
We like to build, celebrate and wonder at the things that LOOK strong. But what happens when someone takes a punch to the mouth — or a shot to one of their support columns?
While the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was unexpected, horrific and devastating on a number of levels, it is a reminder that all that looks majestic and mighty should not be perceived as everlasting. The accident proves that strength can be taken for granted and it does not necessarily equal resilience.
Perhaps then we should stop and revise how we perceive the idea of strength.
Sure — feats of engineering, collaboration and human ingenuity are very much worthy of celebration upon completion. It’s always great when a plan comes together.
But maybe it would be better for us to place more value on resiliency over shows of strength.
Set out to plan and build things, develop people or organizations or societies, not to just seem strong or look impressive, but to actually be resilient. That may mean putting thought into how to handle adversity when it happens versus simply hoping it doesn’t.
And then, perhaps we should recognize, value and celebrate those that prove to be resilient over time.
As we know, plans can go astray once punches are thrown — ultimately it’s those who get punched hard in the mouth and are still able to remain standing after facing adversity that deserve more of our respect and admiration.
Certainly more than those who never take a punch.
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
With sea levels rising, there is cause for concern about the livability of major coastal cities—often huge centers of trade and commerce, and homes to millions of people.
But an overlooked area is how coastal cities are themselves sinking—a phenomenon called relative local land subsidence (RLLS)—which occurs when underground materials, such as soil, rock, or even man-made structures, compact or collapse, causing the surface above to sink. This infographic provides an interesting look at the top 10 cities ranked by the peak subsidence velocity.
If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.
No skill is more valuable or harder to come by than the ability to critically think through problems. Thinking better than others means you’ll have more free time and fewer problems. If you can’t think well, you’ll spend a lot of time fixing avoidable mistakes. Turns out, the process of writing is critical to thinking through an idea.
The term “Roger that” is a widespread term for confirmation, either between truckers on their CB radios, kids playing back and forth with walkie-talkies, or even face to face. But it’s easy to adopt the phrase and understand what it means without ever really knowing where it came from. Read this and you will understand it’s origins.
Harvard scientists recruited more than 200 volunteers for a study recently, measuring both their IQ and EQ. When they put these volunteers into groups and asked them to solve problems together, which mattered more for the teams' success? Emotional intelligence, it turns out, beats mental horsepower. The key to boosting a team’s EQ? Observational reinforcement learning.
Easter—marked in 2024 by Western Christians on March 31 and by Eastern Orthodox Christians on May 5—has been a holiday of ball games (in medieval Europe) and tree decorating (1890s New York), and it remains a celebration of bread, in the form of Ukraine’s paska and England’s hot cross buns. Here’s a quick tour of under-appreciated Easter traditions, from the towering Arches of Bread in Italy to graveyard feasts of Georgia.