When an airplane bounces into a sudden pocket of turbulence, you grab the arms of your seat, as if by holding your seat, you can hold the plane steady. You, of course, know it doesn’t work that way, but your hands don’t. They will hold on to anything they can reach, and the very fact of holding on makes the turbulence more tolerable.
When our lives bounce through pockets of turbulence—such as the uncertainty of joblessness or a confrontation with death or a sense that our work is not making a difference or that we don’t belong—our brains grab hold of our Something Larger, as if it can stop our lives or the world from tumbling out of the sky. And it works.24 It helps us tolerate the uncertainty, the mortality, the helplessness or loneliness, until we find ourselves on the other side of the turbulence and back in smooth airspace.
But sometimes the turbulence lasts too long, or the plane actually crashes. You survive, but you’re left in an “existential vacuum,” devoid of meaning.25 Terrible things happen, leaving us feeling trapped and convinced that nothing we do can make a difference. In such times of crisis, we have to repair the plane before we can return to our journey. That requires us to turn inward toward difficult feelings with kindness and compassion.
Those Disney princess “I Want” stories each have a point where our heroine is in crisis and has to stop and take time to turn inward. Moana has to repair her boat. Snow White needs a long nap and a kiss from her true love. Tiana is forced to stop pursuing her dream when she is turned into a frog; solving the frog problem by “digging a little deeper” not only allows her to get closer to her dream, but also makes her a princess. With compassion for the wounded parts of our hearts, minds, bodies, and communities, our recovery from adversity can include an increased sense of meaning in life, moving us from coping to thriving.
Example: A study of more than three thousand U.S. veterans who had all experienced trauma found that those experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were more likely than those without PTSD to experience post-traumatic growth. This included both a better sense of personal strength (“I discovered that I’m stronger than I thought I was” and “I know better that I can handle difficulties”) and appreciation of life (“I have a greater appreciation for the value of my own life”).26
How do they do it? How can people continue to engage with their Something Larger even in the face of terrible things? Even in the face of terrible things that separate them from their Something Larger?
The key is: You can never be separated from your Something Larger, because it is inside you.
ORIGIN STORY
Want to turn something terrible into an unlooked-for opportunity to engage with your Something Larger and make meaning? Rewrite the narrative of your experience, focusing on the lessons and strengths you gained through adversity.27 We call this your “origin story,” like the origin of Batman’s life as a superhero in the tragic death of his parents or the origin of Wonder Woman on the sheltered shores of Themyscira.
Take half an hour or so to write your story, answering these questions:
1. What parts of the adversity were uncontrollable by you? (e.g., other people and their choices, cultural norms, your life circumstances at the time, your age and prior experience, the weather…)
2. What did you do to survive the adversity, in the moment? (Hint: We know for sure that you did successfully survive the adversity, because here you are.)
3. What resources did you leverage, to continue surviving after the adversity had passed? Be specific. (May include practical resources, like money or information; social resources like friends, your ability to seek, find, and accept help, or your social influence; or emotional resources like persistence, self-soothing, and optimism.)
Once you have your story, take a moment to write about a time when those resources empowered you to overcome a subsequent difficulty.
Then write a summary:
Even though I couldn’t control ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (adversity), I managed to ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (survival tactic), and then I used ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (resource) to grow stronger. After that, I could ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (skill/win/insight).
Writing an origin story can even help you identify your Something Larger, because it helps you notice the parts of your past experience that you leveraged to survive.28 Meaning is not made by the terrible thing you experienced; it is made by the ways you survive.
This process might hurt. That’s actually another part of what makes this practice effective: It allows your body to practice feeling the feelings of past wounds, to learn that those feelings are not dangerous, and to complete the incomplete stress response cycles activated all those years ago.29 It starts with your willingness to look, to risk the discomfort of paying attention to what you thought was only negative, and to learn to see it with nonjudgment, curiosity, and even compassion.
Your Something Larger Is Within You
Moana’s Something Larger is the ocean; she feels it calling her. As she tells Maui, the ocean chose her for her mission. Almost no one agrees with her. Her family wants her to stay home and be chief of her island. Maui is skeptical that the ocean would choose “a curly-haired non-princess” who can’t sail. Then some terrible things happen and Moana drops into the pit of despair. She even tells the ocean to “choose someone else.”
But the ghost of her grandmother, the “village crazy lady” who always believed in her, appears and nudges Moana to remember who she is. As Moana considers what has brought her to this pivotal moment, she realizes (in song form): “The call isn’t out there at all / It’s inside me!”
The call was never coming from “out there”; it was coming from inside her own heart. She was the “chosen one” not because something outside her chose her and called across a distance, but because something in her own heart was calling, and so, without even knowing it, she chose herself.
“Moana” is the Maori word for “ocean”; Disney made the lesson nice and literal.
Whatever calls you, whether it’s the ocean or art or family or democracy, isn’t out there. It’s inside you. Like all the cycles and rhythms we describe in this book, it comes and goes, accelerates and decelerates, falls away and rises again. Like a tide, inside you. But no matter what forces oppose you, whether it’s Human Giver Syndrome or natural disasters or personal loss, nothing can stand between you and your Something Larger.
Your Something Larger lives inside you. Maybe everyone around you disagrees. Maybe your family wants you to stay home—or leave home. Maybe even your mentors are skeptical, and only the village crazy lady agrees with you. Still, you hear it over the noise of Human Giver Syndrome and through the suffering of violence and injustice. You know; you hear the call in your heart.
Julie breathed deeply and stared in the direction of the TV, pondering the question of what matters to her. “My daughter definitely matters,” she said, fluids dripping from most of the orifices in her face. “Diana. Teaching is so important, you know, it really matters, but even if I lost that, if I lost everything else, it would be okay as long as I had Diana.”
And she cried for a long time, until the truth started hurting less.
And that was enough—that moment, that reminder—to get her through a little more of the most challenging time of her life.