Indestructible — On the Things That Cannot Be Broken

What's the most indestructible thing you know of — not materially, but in the way it has survived everything thrown at it and remained, essentially, itself?

That question opens up something interesting about the word indestructible — and what it actually names.

Indestructible means not able to be destroyed. It comes from the Latin destructibilis — from destruere, to destroy. In- negates it. The indestructible thing cannot be taken apart, cannot be dismantled, cannot be eliminated. It persists.

We use it for physical things: indestructible materials, indestructible packaging, the indestructible phone case that you drop from a three-story building and pick up without a scratch. These are metaphors — everything physical can technically be destroyed given enough force. But some things are so resilient, so resistant, that indestructible is the right word in practice.

The more interesting cases are the non-physical ones. What is truly indestructible? Certain mathematical truths — you cannot destroy the Pythagorean theorem. Ideas that, once thought, cannot be unthought — they spread, they transform, they survive the deaths of the people who first had them. The influence of the truly great, which persists across centuries. The record that something happened, which is essentially indestructible once it's widely known.

And then: certain human qualities. The capacity for love in a person who has been badly hurt but not destroyed. The wit that survives trauma. The hope that keeps returning, improbably, to people who have every reason to be without it. The curiosity that cannot be killed by boredom or disappointment or years of work that went nowhere. These things are indestructible in the only sense that matters — they survive.

There's something worth examining in what you have found indestructible in yourself. Not what you wish were indestructible — what has actually proven to be. The things that were taken from you and came back. The qualities you thought you'd lost and found intact under the wreckage.

These are the indestructible things. And knowing what they are tells you something essential about what you're made of.

Here's your question: What have you discovered is indestructible in you — something that survived the things that were supposed to destroy it? And how does knowing that change what you're willing to put at risk?