Lessons In Resilience and Grit From My Son, Aviv
Every morning, I come downstairs to the same sight: pencils strewn across the desk in the family office. But there’s something about these pencils—none of them have erasers. They’ve all been worn down to the nub. And invariably, my son Aviv’s math work is buried beneath a dusting of pink eraser shavings.
He’s in seventh grade. He gets good enough grades—except in math. Because math is his personal hell. Aviv is dyslexic, and numbers simply do not click for him, no matter how hard he tries. Every equation, every word problem, every test is a battle. And every morning, when I see those pencils with their erasers ground to dust, my heart holds two things at once: sorrow and gratitude.
Sorrow, because I know how hard he struggles.
I know the long hours, the frustration, the fight against that voice in his head telling him he’s not enough, that he’s stupid, that he doesn’t have anything to offer the world. I know how much it costs him to sit there and erase, and erase, and erase—working through problems over and over, only to still get the answer wrong.
But also, gratitude—because every morning, there’s another pencil without an eraser.
That means he’s still fighting. He hasn’t given up. He sits in his personal hell, erasing and trying again, erasing and trying again. He refuses to surrender.
And in that refusal, in those countless hours of rewriting and erasing and trying again, something remarkable is happening. Aviv is being shaped—not into a great mathematician, but into something far more important: a man of resilience, a man of wisdom.
Viktor Frankl and the Inner Concentration Camp
My teacher and mentor, Dr. Viktor Frankl, called this the inner concentration camp—not a term he used lightly, having endured four years in a Nazi concentration camp. He knew that, while most of us will never experience something as horrific as the Holocaust, we will all face our own version of captivity—the inner darkness, the suffering that feels inescapable, the daily battle we must fight to maintain our dignity, our will, our defiant spirit.
For Aviv, that inner concentration camp is math.
It’s the mental processing that doesn’t come easily. It’s the way our society demands and shames him into conforming to a system that wasn’t built for him. I’d be lying if I said he has made peace with it. He hasn’t. He hates it. He struggles with it.
But every morning, once again, there are more eraser bits all over the desk.
And that means he’s still showing up.
Life’s Curriculum
We don’t get to choose our curriculum in this life.
If we did, Aviv wouldn’t have chosen dyslexia. He wouldn’t have chosen math. He wouldn’t have chosen the frustration, the hours of trying and failing, the tears and the self-doubt.
But this is the curriculum he was given.
And he is doing the work.
Each of us has a curriculum—our own set of struggles, our own erasers worn down to nothing. Some of us were given loss. Some were given failure. Some were handed the weight of addiction, heartbreak, betrayal, trauma.
We didn’t sign up for it.
But we are in the classroom nonetheless.
And there’s a choice to be made.
We can resist it. We can rage against it. We can sit in bitterness, wishing for a different syllabus, demanding an easier path.
Or we can do the work.
We can pick up the pencil, erase, try again. Erase, try again.
Not to master the subject—but to master ourselves.
The Wisdom of the Body
In our world, intelligence is worshipped. Our education system, our culture, our values—they are all built around what happens between our ears. But there is another kind of wisdom, an ancient wisdom, one we have forgotten in the modern age.
The wisdom of the body.
And that is where Aviv shines.
While math is his battleground, dance is his sanctuary.
He’s been dancing for ten years. Competitive dance. Hours and hours of training, late nights, weekends filled with rehearsals and competitions that stretch from morning to night. And here’s the thing—no one has to push him to do it. No one has to tell him to practice. No one has to remind him to show up.
Because on the dance floor, there are no worn-out erasers. There is only a sharpened pencil.
Up there, he is beyond numbers. He moves with an intuitive rhythm, a precision that can’t be captured in a formula or measured by a test. He executes intricate choreography with the kind of poise and control that defies his struggles with math. While numbers confine him, dance frees him.
And he’s not just good. He’s great.
He wins competitions. He earns the respect of his peers and coaches. He pushes himself, refines his movements, perfects his craft. Because on stage, he isn’t battling dyslexia. He isn’t erasing mistakes. He is creating something beautiful.
And yet, those hours spent wrestling with math problems are not in vain. Because while he may never conquer algebra, he is learning something far more valuable—grit. Persistence. Emotional depth. The ability to feel his frustration, to name it, to process it, and to keep going anyway.
We All Have Our Worn-Out Erasers
Each of us has our version of Aviv’s math work. The thing that breaks us down, that makes us question ourselves, that asks us, Do you really want this?
For the men I coach, it might be rebuilding a life after divorce. It might be wrestling with failure, regret, loneliness. It might be facing a painful truth about who they’ve been and who they want to become.
But those worn-out erasers are proof of the work. They are evidence that we are showing up, erasing, trying again.
And the goal is not to erase forever.
The goal is to one day pick up the sharpened pencil and write—not with hesitation, but with confidence.
Sharpen Your Pencil
Aviv’s math struggle is not going anywhere.
But neither is he.
He will keep showing up, keep wearing those erasers down, keep stepping onto that dance floor.
And in the process, he will become something far greater than a good student.
He will become a man who does not quit.
A man who knows that struggle and suffering are not signs of weakness but the birthplace of wisdom.
A man who understands that while the erasers may wear down, the pencil—the sharpened, steady pencil—remains.
And so, I ask you:
What is your worn-out eraser?
What is the thing that breaks you down, that makes you question yourself, that you keep erasing and rewriting?
And more importantly—how will you sharpen your pencil?
I’m Dr. Baruch “B” HaLevi, founder of Defiant Spirit Coaching and Counseling and Man Uprising—a community of men’s peer groups designed to help men rise up in the second half of life.
Because midlife is not a crisis—it’s a call to rise.
If you’re ready to stop erasing and start sharpening, let’s talk.
