The Secret to Happiness? Take Responsibility for Everything.
April 26, 2019
I was working with a group of women on their presenting recently, emphasizing the importance of being authentic with an audience, when one of the women spoke up: “Yes, but how do we know who our authentic self is? Don’t you think women have been kept from being their authentic selves?”
Oh, boy. Here we go again…down the slippery slope of self-victimization. Do I think that women have been kept from being their authentic selves over time and across cultures? Yes, without a doubt. But…so what? Why let that stop you from living your life, right now?
When we feel that we have been treated unfairly, either as an individual or as a group, we have two choices. We can 1) wallow in our self-righteousness about how we have been wronged; or 2) choose to succeed in spite of it. Choice #1 allows us to blame someone or something else—sexism, for example—for our inability to get ahead, and it gives us a ready excuse for our failures. Choice #2 assumes that nothing—not even sexism—can stop us, and that we deserve the best in this life.
Making Choice #2 is obviously better for us, but why is it so hard to do? Let me explain with a story:
It’s 1920 and a precocious 15-year-old girl—let’s call her Helen—enters Ohio State University, on a fast track far ahead of her (mostly male) peers. From there this daughter of a single mom launches an exciting academic career that leads her from the Sorbonne University in Paris to the American School for Girls in Beirut, Lebanon, where she becomes the headmaster and falls in love with the gracious culture of the Middle East. This is where she will spend her life, she decides. And then comes the call. Her mother has arranged for her to marry a minister in rural Ohio, a man with half her intelligence and no apparent affection for her. And just like that, this brilliant, curious, fabulous woman soaring to her purpose in the world is squashed into a small-town minister’s wife.
Helen was my great aunt. She ultimately had a long and accomplished life in Ohio, but I am quite certain that a part of her died at the age of 33, along with her dream.
And who is to blame for that? She is. Her mother was the one who called her home to a boxed-in life, but it was she who acquiesced.
The path Helen took, which is a path many of us take, was to agree to something she didn’t want to do and then feel victimized by it. All this gave her was a lifetime of bitterness and private suffering.
Remember, Helen had the same choices any of us do when we feel we have been treated unfairly: 1) wallow in our self-righteousness about how we have been wronged; or 2) choose to succeed in spite of it.
Making Choice #1 did not bring Helen happiness. But what if she had make Choice #2? What if she had said “No” to the arranged marriage? Well, she would have had to endure the searing disapproval of her mother, the fear of being disowned, and her own shame for rejecting her culture’s norms. It would have been an incredibly hard choice to make. She might have found herself, for a moment, alone in the world. But that’s what it would have required to clear the path for her to live her dream.
And that’s what makes Choice #2 so hard. It requires us to stand up for what we want, and what we believe, in the face of powerful forces that seek to keep us small. It requires that we recognize, and be willing to declare, our right to a great life, and to assume all the risks that come with that. And for many people, that’s just plain scary.
Now, was Helen’s situation “fair?” No, it wasn’t. But life isn’t fair.
Think about it: Was it fair that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was denied job after job upon graduating at the top of her law school class, simply because she was a woman? Of course not. Was it fair that Oprah Winfrey was born into poverty in a racist country? Nope. But if these women had settled for Choice #1, where would they be today? Where would we all be?
Here’s the bottom line: Choice #1 will never bring happiness, and Choice #2 will always be hard. But the striving required by Choice #2 will bring more happiness than staying small ever will.
So let’s remember something as we go through this grand feminist moment in our country. Unmasking the sexism that lurks everywhere and that has made it harder for women to get ahead is important. But that’s not a place to sit and wallow. It’s a stepping off point, from which to say, “Ok, now what? How am I going to succeed and create the world I want to see?”
Happiness in this messy life requires the courage to make choices that are true to yourself, even when it’s really hard to do. If you take responsibility for all of your life, and resist blaming others for your circumstances, you will find all of the potential of the world available to you.