Weebles Wobble…

But they don’t fall down!

If you’re of a certain generation, you probably will recognize the phrase “Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down!” For the uninitiated, Weeble toys are egg-shaped figurines with weighted bottoms so that, no matter how hard you push or rock them, they will always spring back up-right.

For some crazy reason, my little brother and I were convinced that if we could just push them over hard enough, or hold them on their sides for long enough, that we would prevail. Alas, physics always won. And that simple fact got me thinking about the theme for this post – resilience.

Stating the obvious, the whole point of the toy is that if you knock it over, it got right back up – a simple definition of resilience. And I think there’s some value in such an over-simplified view and definition. But that doesn’t make for an overly satisfying or insightful post… at least to me. So let’s think about my younger self and his relentless efforts to defeat his Weebles.

Part of the fun was that, because of their shape, you could knock a Weeble from any direction and yet they’d always give you the same outcome – they popped back up, rolled around a little and eventually were standing upright again. Comparing this to real life, it’s fair to say that our next surprise can come from pretty much anywhere and all have the potential to knock you for a loop. Though whether or not you jump back up right away may depend.

Or think about my youthful conviction that, if I just held the toy on its side long enough, it would give up and stay tipped over. Aren’t there times in our lives when we feel like there’s some equally relentless force or string of bad luck that keeps us down? That no matter how hard we want to pop back up, we just cannot?

I can even recall taking my Weebles outside and throwing them up in the air, thinking that gravity might work differently if I added some height. Or maybe I’d finally get my way if I slid the Weeble down the 20 foot slide at the playground and the speed & angle would knock it off-kilter. As a pre-schooler, I came up with some pretty extreme – for a 4 year old – methods to put that toy through the wringer.

And yet, I realized over time that, no matter how long I tried to keep my Weeble farmer or ghost down, that once they had the opportunity, they would bounce back every time. Sure, they weren’t always steady on their feet and would wobble for a bit, but eventually all was right in their world again.

So the metaphor is pretty obvious – we’re all Weebles to some degree. But if I’m being honest, there have been some dark times in my life when I wasn’t sure how I could get up or keep going; that the darkness around me might finally win. But even in those times, I heard that little whisper in my head that told me that I would survive this. It didn’t tell me how or when, but there was a calm assuredness that left no room for doubt. If I could just hang in there and look for a way forward – perhaps on my own or perhaps with the help of others – that I would come through okay. And, so far, it’s always been right.

And that is the lesson I think we need to take from this goofy little toy. That no matter what knocks us down and for how long it presses on us, we need to have faith that we can and will rise given the opportunity. It may not be as quickly as we want, and it may not be easy as we seek to get our footing under ourselves again, but to have that knowledge that we can get back up is incredibly powerful. And the more times you do it, the more confidence you can have that you can do it again.

Know that I’m pulling for you.