Beyond Resilience With Metallica

In two previous posts, I’ve written about Metallica’s lyrics concerning suicide and subtle suicide. In this post, we’ll consider how Metallica calls for something beyond resilience with the song “Broken, Beat & Scarred.”

The situation is nearly universal. You are down and defeated and you are tempted to give up. The human condition is such that you must “rise, fall down, rise again.” Of course, not everyone does rise again. Some people fall and stay down. Others rise multiple times but eventually rise no more. A Japanese proverb instructs: Fall down seven times, get up eight. This is the key to success. It is not how many times you fail or how badly you are defeated, but how many times you regroup and try again.

Something more than mere resilience is possible. Repackaging a line from Nietzsche, James Hetfield sings, “What don’t kill ya make ya more strong.” With resilience, you bounce back as good as new. But if you are only as good as before, there may not be much reason to think that things will be different this time. The ideal is to become better and stronger. Nassim Taleb captures this Nietzschean concept with the term “antifragile.”

Things that are fragile break under pressure, whereas things that are resilient bounce back to their previous state. But things that are antifragile actually get better and improve after suffering pressures or shocks.

In many cases, the human body is antifragile—not only does it bounce back after an illness, but it is often better and stronger because it now has antibodies to prevent the illness the next time. Muscles are antifragile: When torn down by exercise, they rebuild and become stronger.

It can sound like silly macho talk to invoke the Nietzschean line à la Hetfield, claiming that “What don’t kill ya make ya more strong,” but it is an ideal to aspire towards. Rather than accept defeat and stay down, you can muster the fortitude to rise again.

Practicing antifragility

The experience of rising after defeat or failure provides confidence and a blueprint for how to do it the next time. This is not your first rodeo—you’ve been thrown from a bucking bronco before. Every situation is different, but you can generalize from your experience to find the confidence to rise again.

It’s not clear if antifragility is a skill that can be taught. If it is, then few skills could be more valuable, and this one should be taught from a young age.

What is clear, though, is that antifragility can be modeled. We can learn it from observing others, even if we can’t learn it from an instruction book. Since it can be modeled, we have a duty to be honest with others. We should not pretend that we are unharmed by the Shakespearean “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

Our instinct is often to cover our wounds, even to deny that they are there, or at least to pretend that they have healed and no longer bother us. The power of Metallica’s song derives not just from mighty guitar riffs but from its message that we should not conceal our psychological injuries. We incur them in the midst of daily life and should proudly display them for the world to see. “Breaking your teeth on the hard life comin’ / Show your scars / Cutting your feet on the hard earth runnin’ / Show your scars / Bleeding your soul in a hard luck story / Show your scars / Spilling your blood in the hot sun’s glory / Show your scars.”

Of course, scars can be used to impress and intimidate others, but that is not the intention in this case. Rather, the intention is to take pride in a way that simultaneously salutes your individual toughness and recognizes our common humanity. Yes, your scars, emotional or physical, are badges of honor, but they are also indications of vulnerability. Thus we display toughness not in pretending to be bulletproof, but in admitting that we bleed as easily as anyone else.

Metallica's powerful reminder

“Broken, Beat & Scarred” begins in the second person, “You rise / You fall,” but the feel is that Hetfield is speaking of his own experience. This perspective becomes clear when he switches to the first person as the object, “they scratch me.” By the middle of the song, though, the second person is directed to the listener with the imperative to “show your scars.” By the final line of the song, the narrator and the listener are joined in common cause in the first-person plural, “we die hard.”

There is no yielding softness in the face of death or defeat. We don’t give up easily. The message is not just a command but a wish and a reminder. If we are not literally killed, then we have a chance to rise again, to re-create ourselves as something better and stronger. Ultimately, we are all engaged in “the fight to the final breath.” With death disappears the chance to become stronger. We may rise again in another form, but who knows what awaits us in “the undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns”?