The Goal Is Not To Rise Above And Beyond The Human Condition
Listening to a story about someone losing their temper and screaming at people who didn’t deserve to be screamed at, Anna Kendrick’s initial reaction was one of disgust. She thought, what a catty, nasty, irrational jerk. But then she reconsidered. She thought about her own moments of being catty, nasty, and irrational. She thought about how she too has taken her anger, frustration, stress, and-or impatience out on people who didn’t deserve it. And then she thought, it’s okay to have those “ugly” moments from time to time. In fact, it’s impossible to completely eliminate them. “Like I’m trying to remember,” Kendrick said, “that my goal in life is not to rise above the human condition. It is not to judge myself or judge others when they have a very ugly, human moment. Because the animal exists inside all of us, whether you want it to or not. And to suggest or think that there’s some kind of belief system or program that can get you completely beyond that is, I think, really dangerous.”
Ugly, irrational, and-or very human moments, reactions, and emotions that are unavoidable parts of the human condition—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Something’s Not Wrong With Me, Something’s Right With Me
When she was 15, the acclaimed singer-songwriter Jewel ran away from home. She eventually landed in San Diego, where she lived in her car, worked odd jobs, and developed agoraphobia, a debilitating anxiety of public places. “I was gripped by terror if I tried to leave my car,” she writes. “I was absolutely convinced that if I stepped outside my car I would be seized by illness. It was totally irrational and paralyzing…I rarely left my car, and when I did, it was to pee in someone’s yard or behind a bush, or to shoplift food.” Much more on how she learned to manage her anxiety in ways that helped her literally write her way to a better life here, but suffice it here to say she didn’t rise above and beyond the emotion—instead, she reframed what she once thought of as “totally irrational” as something that is very human. “It’s like eating bad fish,” she said. “If I eat bad fish and I get food poisoning and I throw up, something’s not wrong with me; something’s right with me—my body is working properly. Anxiety, fear, stress, doubt are the same way. They’re a neon sign trying to tell me that I’m consuming something in my environment that my body isn’t agreeing with. That I’m engaging in a behavior, a thought, or an action that my body doesn’t agree with. Things like anxiety are your body’s way of communicating inner conflict.”
We Have To Remind Ourselves Over And Over: This Is Water. This Is Water
There’s a story told in 12-step programs about two young fish swimming along. They come across an older fish swimming the other way, and the older fish nods and says, “Morning boys, how’s the water?” The two youngsters keep swimming, and eventually one turns to the other and goes, “What the hell is water?” In his 2005 commencement speech, This is Water, David Foster Wallace famously explained what is so hidden in plain sight all around us humans, the way water is to fish: our total freedom of choice regarding how and what to think when experiencing the petty, boring, frustrating, annoying “parts of life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches.” Traffic jams, crowded grocery stores, long checkout lines, delayed flights, passive-aggressive emails, rude, selfish, catty people—life is full of dreary, annoying, petty, frustrating crap. “But that is not the point,” Wallace says. “The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable all the time.” If you get cut off on the highway, for example, you can be pissed off about the inconsiderate, aggressive, stupid driver for the rest of the day. Or, “I can choose to force myself to consider…it’s not impossible that the car that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.” You can’t rise above and beyond the petty, frustrating parts of the human condition. “But,” Wallace continues, “you can choose [to] consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable.” Possibilities that are “so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: This is water. This is water.” (File next to: The Burden Of Passively-Chosen Thoughts)
It’s Got Pain In There, It’s Got Hate In There, It’s Got Boredom And Frustration In There
Boredom, tedium, the frustration of repetitive tasks and responsibilities, those days when you don’t feel like doing things you typically like doing—I used to think that these were things one could and should try to rise above and beyond. I read or heard lots of people make the same sort of suggestion: “find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” “only do things that feel like play to you but look like work to others,” and, “don’t settle for anything less than what you would do if it were the last day of your life.” I bought in to this kind of advice, and whenever a job felt boring and tedious and not like play and not like the thing I would do if it were the last day of my life, I’d make myself miserable with thoughts like, something’s wrong, and suggestions like, quit, don’t settle, find work that is never work. It’s been helpful to find people who write and talk about work in ways that are, I think, more tethered to reality. One of my favorite people in this category is the legendary skateboarder Rodney Mullen. Mullen started skateboarding in 1974, invented most of the sport’s tricks, and started the first-ever skateboarder-owned company, which eventually sold for $46 million. In his 50s now, he still skates every day. When asked to what he attributes his sustained success, Mullen talks about boredom, tedium, and that it’s very human to have days where you don’t feel like doing things you typically like doing. “There is tedious stuff to everything,” he says. “No matter how good things seem, or you wish you had something, talk to anyone in that position, it is my guess that they will say it gets old.” When we look at positions or professions we’re not in, we tend to focus on their most appealing aspects. But whether it’s a skateboarder, an artist, a doctor, a chef, an entrepreneur, a scientist, a lawyer, an aerospace engineer or an AI researcher: all professions—even the most romanticized, idealized, high status—are, at their core, collections of tasks that must be relentlessly repeated. And repetition is intrinsically boring, tedious, and painfully frustrating. “There are days,” as Rodney puts it, “where you don’t want to go out. Or it hurts. Or you’re sore. Or you just suck—you’re not making progress, and you feel defeated…But that’s the nature of love—it’s got hate in there, it’s got pain in there.” That’s the nature of the human condition—it’s got hate in there, it’s got pain in there, it’s got boredom in there, it’s got tedious stuff in there, it’s got days when you feel frustrated and defeated in there, it’s got days when you don’t want to go out, days when you’re not making progress, and days when you’re not loving what you’re doing in there.
A Week Off Is Really Two Weeks
Vince Vaughn estimates that he got hired one in every one thousand auditions when he was starting out as an actor. Early on, he struggled with getting rejected. “I would get down,” he said. “I would take a week, and I would just not do anything. I’d lose my energy…But then I started to realize that the week I took off was really two weeks. It was a week of not getting better, and it was a week of getting worse. And so now I’ve given myself two weeks less to improve at the things I’m in control of.” After he realized that rejections are an unavoidable part of trying to become an actor, he stopped making it his goal to try to rise above and beyond that inevitable condition. Instead, he said, “I started looking at it like a percentages game: the more I worked to improve at the things I’m in control of, the more my percentages would go up…I think it’s important to allow yourself to feel disappointed, it’s important that you don’t turn off those feelings. But it is also important to, as quickly as possible, get back to being productive, to doing the things that are going to give you a better opportunity for what you want…The sooner you can get back to doing the things you’re in charge of, I think, your chances of having the things you want in your life become greater.”
Don’t Ask The Impossible
In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes that to ask to rise above and beyond the human condition—to ask to never lose your temper or to never take your stress out on others or to never feel anxious or to never get frustrated or annoyed or to never have days when you don’t feel like doing things you typically like doing or to never feel down after getting rejected—is to ask the impossible. “Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions,” he writes. “But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human—however imperfectly.”