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June 30, 2021 - July 31, 2024
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.
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.
If we want to change the world, we need change agents to know how to receive care.
The first step is knowing the game is rigged—seeing the way the rules are set up not just to treat some people unequally, but also to blind us to the unfairness of the rules.
The next steps are to apply the first three chapters of the book: (1) Complete the cycle, to deal with the stress itself. (2) Use planful problem-solving and positive reappraisal, to keep your Monitor satisfied. And (3) engage with your Something Larger, which will heal Human Giver Syndrome.
These feelings are uncomfortable, and when they get really intense it’s tempting to ignore them and just stop playing. In other words: burnout. So let’s not ignore them.
“new hotness” is our texting shorthand for looking fabulous without reference to the socially constructed ideal.
Social connection is a form of nourishment, like food.
No one is “complete” without other people—and we mean this literally.
Certain kinds of connection create energy. When you share mutual trust and “connected knowing” with someone, you co-create energy that renews both people. We call this the “Bubble of Love.”
As Audre Lorde put it, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Mental rest is not idleness; it is the time necessary for your brain to process the world.
Quite simply, we are not complete without sleep.
Learning is not complete without sleep. Your memories consolidate and new information is integrated into existing knowledge.
Emotions are not complete without sleep. You can dream about beating the daylights out of your enemy, and you’ll wake up feeling released from the grip of your rage, better able to handle interpersonal conflict.
42 percent might
Broken down this way, it’s almost painfully simple and obvious: sleep, food, friends, and movement.
You Can’t Spell “Resist” Without “Rest”
Sleep is a racial justice issue
as well as a gender issue, a class issue, and a basic public health issue. Sleep can heal more than your body; it can begin to heal cultural wounds.
Getting the rest your body requires is an act of resistance against the forces that are trying to rig the game and make you helpless. Reclaim rest and you reclaim sovereignty over your own life.
James Baldwin famously said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
As Brittney Cooper writes in Eloquent Rage, “Happiness is predicated on ‘happenings,’ on what’s occurring, on whether your life is going right, and whether all
is well. Joy arises from an internal clarity about our purpose.”1 When we engage with something larger than ourselves, we make meaning; and when we can resonate, bell-like, with that Something Larger, that’s joy. And because our Something Larger is within us, no external circumstances can take away our source of joy, no matter the “happenings” around us.
Wellness, once again, is not a state of mind,
but a state of action;
The cure for burnout is not “self-care”; it is all of us caring for one another.
So we’ll say it one more time: Trust your body. Be kind to yourself. You are enough, just as you are right now. Your joy matters. Please tell everyone you know.
