Recently I was standing in my kitchen with a man I hate. 

He didn’t know I hated him.

This man was criticizing my announced choice of study – literature – and telling me that English was a useless degree and that I should in turn study something of substance – something like engineering, finances, business, something useful. Literature was a hobby, not the point. The point was to produce, not to indulge. I should study something that would allow me to thrive in a corporate world. Something that mattered. Something like what he had studied.

At that moment, my resentment morphed into pity. 

He was so proud of himself for winning a game he didn’t even like playing. 

I used to condemn speech like this; I used to label it as misogynistic. I used to see it as a notion that intelligence in women was so incredibly rare, they must use it in an intensely useful way. I saw this speech as hateful because of the effect it had on women. I saw myself as insightful for this; I could see the connection there, and I could see the secret hate that was within every word, that the seemingly “woke” ideology of encouraging women into STEM had become entirely paradoxical to its original role. I could see that this wasn’t freeing women; it was just putting them into another box. I saw myself as quite intelligent for this realization. I would argue with him about it for hours. 

Recently I was standing in my kitchen with a sad man I once hated.

He didn’t know he was sad. 

But I did. He hated his life. He woke up every morning, he kissed his children goodbye, he went to work, he worked, he ate lunch with his friends, he came home from work, he greeted his wife, she made dinner, he ate dinner, he went to bed, he did it all again the next day. There was nothing wrong with his life. In fact, he had the ideal life: intelligent, successful children, a great job and a beautiful wife. He had won. He had won the game, and he loathed every aspect of the trophy. He just didn’t know it. 

I used to think he was shallow, and that is why he was doomed to never experience genuine joy. I used to think all he cared about were appearances, that he loved his children’s accolades, not them, that he loved that he could brag about his wife at parties, even if she never wanted to attend with him. I thought I was wise for being able to see this, that his happiness was flimsy at best and fake at worst. I thought seeing him as unhappy made me some level of intelligent – I could see through the facade, and I was better for it. I thought I was winning the game.

I thought I could see the truth he couldn’t, and he thought he could see the reality I ignored. 

And I thought I would be happier than he could ever be; I would pursue something I loved, despite his misogynistic ideals of the topic. I would build the life I genuinely loved, not one I was just proud to talk about. 

But the truth and the reality is we were both playing, and we were both unhappy. We were treating our interactions, our day-to-days and the purpose of our lives as a game – a game with an objective. His was success. Mine was happiness. And both are stupid. 

Somewhere along the way, throughout all of our upbringings, we have been lied to, and we have been convinced there is a point, there is an end goal, there is a ruler along which we may all measure our lives. And although you decide the markings, you are handed the ruler. 

We have assumed this to be true because it is easy, and, just as this man had done, most of us choose productivity and success as our markings. They are easily distinguishable. They are easy to point to and say, “Look, I lived well,” but the reality is that these objectives make our lives games – games we can win or lose. 

But life is not winnable. It is experienceable; perhaps there is not a point to that experience, and perhaps that is the greatest gift we can ever know. We can decide the meaning, and the meaning doesn’t have to look like factories, and weapons, and imperialism, and poverty, and CEOs, and scandals, and races; our world does not have to be a race to the top on who can make the most. We can build a world in which beautiful literature is the point. We can build a world where seeming “indulgences” (anything that is not profitable) are the objective, and not a nice perk.

They have convinced us that this is how it is, how it always has been and how it always will be. Do not believe it. This is not normal. It does not have to be this way. It does not have to be a game.