Option B

by Sheryl Sandberg

don’t have access to the sick and

“I am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger than I ever imagined.” When

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

When I started reading Antoine’s post, I felt tremendous sorrow. But when I finished it, I was overcome by a tingling sensation in my chest and a lump in my throat. Adam told me there was a term for this (psychologists have a term for everything). “Moral elevation” describes the feeling of being uplifted by an act of uncommon goodness. Elevation brings out what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” Even in the face of atrocity, elevation leads us to look at our similarities instead of our differences. We see the potential for good in others and gain hope that we can survive and rebuild. We become inspired to express compassion and battle injustice. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

It turns out that people who choose to be single are very satisfied with their lives. “Singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored,” psychologist Bella DePaulo finds, “and still live happily ever after.” She asks us to imagine a world where married people are treated like singles: “When you tell people you are married, they tilt their heads and say things like ‘Aaaawww’ or ‘Don’t worry, honey, your turn to divorce will come.’…At work, the single people just assume that you can cover the holidays and all the other inconvenient assignments.”