Gifted people everywhere

Photo by Adrienne Merritt on Unsplash

I keep the news cycle at a cautious, respectful distance these days. Rather than mainlining the internet like I used to, I scan the headlines once a day when I’m at my laptop, click on a few things that interest me, and rely on a rotation of podcasts for deeper dives. I miss a lot of storylines, but to be honest, it’s been hugely liberating to accept that a lot of it is just none of my business.

So when I saw that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s resignation had sparked a frenzied internet discourse, I was struggling to understand why it was such a big story. Was there something more going on here other than the fact that Ardern, who is 42, didn’t want to be PM anymore after nearly six years which included a pandemic, having a child while in office, and being on the receiving end of innumerable death threats, conspiracy theories, and unhinged misogyny?

So I finally caved and listened to a 30 minute Guardian podcast about it. Despite all the breathless coverage, it turns out there really wasn’t anything else going on here. What Ardern said about her decision was about as reasonable an answer as anyone could’ve hoped for: “I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.”

The fact that Ardern’s choice was still treated as mystifying, scandalous, and shocking by the news cycle is telling. There are very few positive models in our culture for knowing your limits. For being kind to yourself first. For turning down fame, success, notoriety, or infamy because you don’t want to be super fucking stressed out all the time. For simply turning around and saying: I don’t want to do this anymore.

In fact, we tend to valorize those who choose the stress, the sacrifice, the bravery, the denial of limitations or humanness. The larger their public profile or more obvious their outward facing success, the less we think about the likely tradeoffs for the individual involved. We are trained to see success as an end in itself, and all other consequences as just the price of admission — even if they ruin one’s life. 

And yet the fact that Ardern decided to resign isn’t surprising at all if you paid even a passing attention to her politics. The left was so taken with her precisely because of the kindness, empathy, and vulnerability she displayed as a leader. It was so remarkable because it didn’t appear to be optics or a well-executed viral social strategy. She didn’t just mean it, she embodied it. You can’t fake that. 

But here’s the catch: compassion is a two way street. You can’t meaningfully direct kindness, empathy, and care out into the world if you don’t first extend those same values to yourself — which is a lot harder than it sounds. So of course she stepped down. She actually meant it when she said she wanted to be kind and vulnerable. Staying in the job would no longer allow her to embody those qualities in her own life, and her politics would have turned into a performance. It just wouldn’t have worked.

I read a similar story this month about the golfer Anthony Kim. I’d never heard of him before, but his talent was thought to rival Tiger Woods in the 2000s. Then he went dark. Stopped playing the game. Just didn’t want to do it anymore. The piece alluded to his harsh and unrelenting father who treated him as a golf prodigy to train rather than a child to love. This strikes me as a pretty obvious reason to not want to yoke your entire life to the game of golf, but what do I know.

Nevertheless, the sports world has never accepted Kim’s decision to stop; they doggedly pursue him to this day. But as the piece notes, “there are gifted people everywhere turned off by the relentless pursuit of external validation. And failure, in the eyes of others, may represent freedom for the individual.”

I feel a silent kinship with these people. In fact, I’m really happy for them. As I explored in my interview with AJ Daulerio this month, when the internal experience of success feels bad, it isn't really success at all — no matter how it looks to others. The bravest thing you can do is admit that, ignore what it will look like to everyone else if you quit, go dark, take as much time as you need, and then boldly choose another, freer path. 

On a broader level, the way we frame these choices — in the news, to our kids, to ourselves — matters a lot. People who have the humility, self knowledge, and bravery to say “you know what, this isn’t for me anymore” are precisely the kinds of leaders and role models we need more of. When someone has turned their back on fame, success, power, or ego in service of their own well being, I think they should earn more of our respect, not less.

Things I enjoyed reading

• “The story that we have to illuminate is that we don’t have to be complicit with destruction.” [New York Times]

• Thanks to streaming platforms, there’s a lot more money in documentary filmmaking these days, which is probably why the ethics of them have slid into very icky territory. [Vulture]

• “When we talk about the process through which men are taking on more domestic responsibility, we often focus on how they should notice and care more. But I wonder if … women can afford to care less.”   [The Cut]

• Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket. [Oliver Burkeman]

• On promoting your book — or, more boldly, writing it in real time — on Substack, featuring writing wisdom from my partner Dan. [Substack]

• Two fun things: A replicable formula for making delicious salads and snippets from Cup of Jo’s great Parenting Around the World series.

Things I enjoyed listening to

• Dan Savage remains incredibly thoughtful and relevant on sex and relationships. His “price of admission” theory is refreshingly honest and liberating. [The Ezra Klein show]

• “Having a strong opinion when you know nothing about a topic is your political right, but it’s also a symptom of a psychological problem. Having a society filled with such people becomes a social problem.” A more-thoughtful-than-usual conversation on the loss of public trust in institutions. [Making Sense]

• From Mormons and MLMs to free-birthers and sunscreen alarmists, a disturbingly accurate taxonomy of momfluencers. [Sounds Like a Cult]

Word Soup

“I once told her she had no skin between herself and the outside world. Such a condition can make daily life painful, but it can also make for wonderfully particular, wonderfully alive writing. It's writing that's stripped bare of the kind of chatty filler that makes the writer feel more secure, that assuages the writer's fear of what she's seen in those deep recesses. Every sentence is pointed, to the point, a working part of the whole machine.” —Ann Rittenberg

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