“I just need a little more help,” she said at last. “We’d been having this same fight over and over and he wasn’t hearing me and nothing had changed. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I ran out of ‘can.’ I lost the ability to can. If I do everything, if I manage his feelings and the house and everything, then I’m exhausted. And if I don’t do it, I suffer from his shitty mood and nothing gets done. I’m just tired. When I made him move downstairs, I didn’t even have the energy to be mad, you know? I was too tired to yell.”
She wasn’t where she needed to be yet, to preserve her own well-being. It would take a more blatant wake-up call to force her to turn and fight for larger-scale, longer-term well-being. But sometimes it’s enough just to get through the day and still feel like there’s a reason to keep struggling.
* * *
—
During World War II, an unknown Jew, hiding from the Nazis, scratched these words into the wall of a cellar:30
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when feeling it not.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.
This is not a poem that explains what the Holocaust might “mean.” How can genocide ever “mean” anything to its victims and survivors? It’s a poem about how a person can make it through such horrors. We can’t “believe” our way out of oppression, exile, or despair. But when we make meaning, we can sustain ourselves through worse things than we can imagine.
“Meaning in life” is made when you engage with the Something Larger that’s waiting for you inside your own body, linking you to the world. It doesn’t take much, but it’s important because our “meaning in life,” established when we’re doing well, will be a bedrock to support us, whatever adversity we face. We can hold on, come what may, by listening to the quietness inside ourselves, that knows the world makes sense.
There is plenty of adversity in the world, and it’s the topic of the next two chapters. But we want you to confront it knowing you are well armed with these innate weapons and the skill to use them. You’ve got your stress response and the knowledge of how to complete the cycle. You’ve got your Monitor and planful problem-solving and positive reappraisal. You’ve got your Something Larger. They will protect you from adversity. They will heal you in the aftermath of adversity.
So this is the point in the story where we step away from the shelter of internal experience. This is the time when we stand and look into the face of the enemy.
It’s about to get pretty dark. But you’re ready.
tl;dr:
? “Meaning in life” is good for you. You make meaning by engaging with something larger than yourself—whether that’s ambitious goals, service to the divine, or loving relationships.
? Meaning enhances well-being when you’re doing well, and it can save your life when you’re struggling.
? Human Giver Syndrome is a collection of personal and cultural beliefs and behaviors that insist that some people’s only “meaning in life” comes from being pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others.
? The stress response cycle, the Monitor, and meaning are all resources you carry with you into the battle against the real enemy.
PART II
The Real Enemy
4
THE GAME IS RIGGED
Sophie was taking her show on the road, being paid—a lot—to speak at corporate meetings about creating workplaces that support a diverse workforce. She was running some drafts of her talk by Emily, for her pedagogical expertise.
“What’s that?” Emily asked, pointing to an unfamiliar word on a PowerPoint slide.
“Kobayashi Maru,” Sophie said, and when Emily looked blank, she explained, “It’s a training simulation for Starfleet cadets, an unwinnable scenario designed to test your character. You can’t win, so the goal is to lose in a way that’s honorable.”
“A Star Trek thing?” Emily asked.
“A Star Trek thing,” Sophie confirmed, “that turns systemic bias into a game.” She clicked to the next slide. “People hire people they know, people who went to the same schools.” She pointed to the statistics graphic, then clicked to the next slide, which was full of references to Implicit Associations research. “They have an unconscious bias that makes them prefer people who look like them.” The next slide was covered in images from movies, TV shows, videogames, and comic books. “Every piece of media they consume affirms their biases. And”—she clicked to the next slide, which was covered in dozens of characters, all white, all men, all heroes: knights in shining armor, men in capes, mutants with telepathic abilities, wizards, detectives, wizard detectives—“they see that spaces filled with white men are not just normal, but better.”
Her tone lightened to her more usual geeky excitement. “So here I am, trying to rescue the ship in the Neutral Zone, and the Klingons are going to attack. I. Am. Going. To. Die. The win is I prove my character every time I’m tested.”
“You’re going to tell them outright that they’re creating an unwinnable scenario?”
Sophie nodded. “The science says it’s good for us to name it.”
That science is the subject of this chapter.
* * *
—
In the wake of violence, the first priority is to stop the bleeding and save the victim’s life. But at some point, we need to go back and figure out how the bleeding started so we can prevent it from happening again. We need to talk about the knife and the person who used it against us.
The tools we described in Part I stop the bleeding; they can help you right now. They can quite literally save your life. Every human can complete the stress response cycle, manage their Monitor, and engage with their Something Larger, because those resources exist inside us. You’ll have access to them all your life, no matter where you go, no matter what culture you live in.
But we need to talk about where the bleeding came from—the knife, and the enemy who wielded it.
If you’re a woman in the industrialized West, you’ll confront a particular set of enemies that will try to cut you down to size, over and over, and they’ll lie to your face while they do it, saying it’s for your own good, saying you should be grateful for their “help.” And because we’ve been confronting these enemies literally since before we were born, we often believe them.
To explain, we need to talk about some rat research. We promise it’s worth it.
Okay: Imagine two rats. Rat #1—let’s call him Ralph the Rat…only pronounced “Rafe,” like Ralph Fiennes. In fact, let’s say it’s not a rat, it is actually Ralph Fiennes. He’s in a box—it’s called a “shuttle box”—with a floor that periodically electrocutes his feet. It’s not painful, but it is uncomfortable. Ralph hates being electrocuted and he wants to get out of there every time it happens. Fortunately for him, after the zapping begins, a little door opens briefly, and he can make a run for it! He escapes! His dopamine levels double, as his Monitor quickly learns that escaping the shock is an attainable goal! He has overcome adversity and learned that he can make a difference in his situation.
Rat #2—we’ll call him Colin—and let’s make it Colin Firth, because why not?—is not in a box; he’s in a tank of water, for the “forced-swim test.” (You can tell it’s bad just by the name, right?) Colin, like most rats, can swim—he did it in Pride and Prejudice and A Single Man—but he doesn’t love it; he’d like to get out of the water as soon as possible. So he swims and swims and swims and swims…and never reaches dry land. As he keeps failing, he get frustrated…and then desperate! Foopy! And ultimately Colin’s Monitor switches its assessment of his goal from “potentially attainable” to “unattainable.” His dopamine levels drop by half; he feels helpless, and he just floats, in a last-ditch effort to reserve energy until there’s any sign of land.