Resilience

A single drop of rain can weigh

fifty times as much as a mosquito and yet

the insect flies through a downpour without injury.

Rather than resist the impact, they

"go with the flow"—

like a boyfriend who trained in aikido—

and when there's a direct hit

the long wings and legs act "like a kite with a lengthy

tail"

so the insect can pull through the globule

before it splats on the ground. Moreover,

when such resilience is used as a model for robots

we learn: "If you make it very, very small,

you basically don't have to do anything else

to make it survive." A tough exoskeleton helps.

Also a happy-go-lucky heart even though

his mother was strangled when he was seven.

Source: Brain Fever (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2014)