The Resilience Project by Hugh van Cuylenburg

Author:Hugh van Cuylenburg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760892784
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Funny story about a teacher

How’s netball going?

How’s tennis going?

Why do you reckon backhand is so much harder than forehand?

What racquet do you use?

My parents are so annoying (mine weren’t, but this is something every teenager seems to say at some point).

Cute story about my little brother

This was hardly pioneering. Millions of kids around the world no doubt did the same thing. These phone calls were a rite of passage; they were how we learned the skills necessary to interact and communicate well with others, including adults, and to make connections.

By Year 12 I’d fallen madly in love with another girl, Christie, who’d arrived at our school a year earlier. I will never forget the feeling of properly falling in love for the first time; that feeling seemed to elevate every waking moment. Christie was the quintessential girl next door, even though she had grown up anything but next door. Her family lived out of town on a couple of hundred acres. Mobile phones hadn’t quite become ubiquitous in 1998 so, once again, if I wanted to talk to Christie outside of school I had to call her at home, which I did almost every night without fail. More than two decades later, I can still recite her home phone number.

Christie’s dad was an engineer who mostly worked from home, so the home phone number was essentially his office line, too. Nine times out of ten it was he who answered whenever I called. Before long we started having long conversations that would sometimes last ten to 15 minutes before I’d get around to asking if Christie was free.

Christie’s dad loved his sport and was always interested in how I was going at cricket and football – so much so that he’d even come and watch me play on the weekends. I was 17 turning 18 and he was approaching 50, but by talking on the phone almost every day we developed a wonderful friendship. More than once we got so caught up in conversation I’d say goodbye and hang up, having completely forgotten to speak with Christie. Sometimes I would hear Christie in the background, yelling, ‘Dad, he didn’t call to speak to you!’

It was from this man that I learned to take an interest in others – a real interest. Most times when I asked how things were going in his life, he’d turn the conversation back to me: ‘No, no, nothing much interesting to tell you, Hugh. Now what’s the latest with your cricket? How’s your mum and dad? Tell me how things are going at school.’

Christie’s dad taught me that being genuinely interested in other people is how you connect and develop strong, lasting relationships. If you don’t really care what’s going on in someone’s life, you’re never going to be close with them. I also learned from him not to talk about myself all the time; everybody’s life is interesting, and the more you listen the quicker you learn that we all have a story.

Sadly, at

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