The only skill that matters
Why resilience trumps everything else in an uncertain world.
A friend of mine was freaking out about his two-year-old's future.
"Will education even matter when AI takes over? Should he learn to code? What if there are no jobs?"
I get it. I have kids. And parents are desperate to prepare kids for a future no one can predict. But honestly, this isn't just a parenting issue—it's a human one. We're all facing this uncertain future together.
After thinking about it, I told him, "Teach your kid resilience. That's the only thing that can't be taken from him."
And the truth is, we all need this skill now more than ever.
I'm speaking from experience. When I was growing up, the formula was clear: study X, become Y. Medical school = doctor. Engineering school = engineer. For me, it was watching my dad adjust his tie every morning, slipping into those immaculately pressed shirts. I wanted that—the polish, the respect, the clear path forward.
I remember studying the classifieds daily, gauging salary ranges, imagining myself in the highest-paid position on the page. That was the plan. Haha.
Then life laughed, and the Internet happened.
I opened my Gmail account in 1998. Google, Yahoo, AskJeeves, painfully slow dial-up Internet at 56kbps—the web was this wild new playground. Then social media exploded. Then the iPhone dropped. Suddenly, careers that didn't exist became essential, and skills we'd spent years mastering became outdated in months.
Companies started asking for things like "HTML knowledge" and "digital product management." What the hell was digital product management? (I'm one now).
And remember social media ninja? Lord.
Anyway, I wasn't prepared for this shift. Neither were my friends from university. But some of us adapted, and some of us didn't.
The difference wasn't intelligence or education. It's something harder to define but easier to recognize: the ability to say "I don't know this yet, but I'll figure it out."
That's resilience.
But let's not trivialize resilience as just bouncing back from failure. It's something deeper. It's the quiet confidence that no matter what gets thrown at you, you'll find a way through. Not around it, not over it, but through it, scars and all.
Like me, I'm sure you've watched this play out over and over:
The engineer who became a UX designer when his job was outsourced. It wasn't because he loved design, but because he needed to eat and was willing to learn.
The journalist who became a content strategist when newspapers collapsed. Again, not because she had a passion for marketing, but because she understood that stories still mattered, even if the medium changed.
The taxi driver who figured out the gig economy when Uber arrived. Do you think he was tech-savvy? Nope, but he was resourceful enough to adapt to new rules.
None of them were prepared for these exact changes. But they all shared something: when their world shifted, they shifted with it.
Here's my attempt at explaining what resilience looks like in the real world.
When your industry disappears, you don't mourn it forever, you study what's replacing it. When your skills become obsolete, you don't defend them, you build new ones. When the rules change, you don't complain about fairness, you learn the new game.
Makes sense, right?
This isn't about being emotionless or never feeling frustrated. If you're not feeling angry, I question your humanity. But it's about not letting those feelings paralyze you.
My dad's generation had one career change in their lifetime, maybe two. My generation has had four or five major pivots. My friend's two-year-old will probably have to reinvent himself a dozen times.
And don't question whether change is coming—of course it is. The question is whether we're building the muscle to handle it.
The good thing about resilience is that it's not a personality trait you're born with. It's a skill you develop through practice.
Every small failure you recover from makes you stronger for the big ones. And if you survive a big failure? You develop skin so thick that nothing can pierce it again.
Every time you learn something new, you prove to yourself that you can.
Every pivot you make successfully builds confidence for the next one.
The important piece is movement. Don't be static and stagnant.
So yes, teach your kids coding, languages, and whatever seems relevant today. But more importantly, teach them that not knowing something isn't a permanent condition—it's just a starting point.
The robots are coming. The algorithms are learning. The future is uncertain.
But humans are resilient, and we've been figuring things out for thousands of years.
We're not stopping now.
This is really interesting, as a mum of two I w been thinking a lot lately about what I should be teaching my kids. Is it resilience or is it the ability to learn quickly coupled with a growth mindset? What’s your view Parves?
My dad said long ago that there is no standing still; you're either moving forward or backward, he told me nearly 50 years ago. It's funny what sticks with you. We were in our Chevy Nova on Highway 62 when he said it, and it stuck with me. Have a good week.