- I went back to my college campus
30 years after I had graduated.
And I, I was just curious to sit down,
and talk to students about what their inner lives were like
as opposed to the lives that they present on surface -
on the surface as they're walking around campus.
And there is, you know, like an incredible, almost
like a magic power that you have when you show up someplace
as a writer, because people will be more willing to talk
to you about their insides, in that kind
of context, than they might be
if you just met them at a cocktail party or something.
So, you know, so I, I came
to campus and I was talking to these students
and literally two minutes into the conversation,
they start telling me
about this phenomenon called 'effortless perfection'.
Which is a term I, at that point, hadn't heard before,
but I now know it's a very common term
or buzzword on U.S. campuses.
And it basically means, the social pressure
that students feel to...
to look attractive, to be thin, to be fit,
to be socially adept, to be getting great grades,
to be bound for career success, all these things.
And not only are they supposed to be perfect
in all these different domains, but also it's supposed to
appear to come effortlessly.
- Hmm.
- So, you know, you're, you're supposed to be
like that proverbial duck where you can't see them,
you know, paddling wildly under the pond.
They're just like gliding along the surface as
if nothing's happening, but, but really they're,
they're paddling madly underneath.
And, you know, and, and, and there has been
on our nation's campuses, also just increasing levels
documented of anxiety and depression,
and these media stories
of, of kids who would die by suicide only 24 hours
after posting on Instagram, you know, smiling pictures
of themselves, surrounded with all their friends.
So, there's something happening of this great disconnect
between what people actually feel, and what they
feel they can express.
And...
That's just... That situation makes it so
that we can't show up in all our wholeness to each other.
And the real problem with it...
I mean, there's a sense of personal invalidation of like,
"Well, maybe the way I am is really not okay."
There's that, but there's also the sense
that we're not having as much
of a communion as we could, because...
we're - we're showing up essentially
with our avatars and not with ourselves.
- And we lose something, like, we lose...
I mean, you say here, I, I've quoted you,
you say, you speak
about how sadness triggers compassion in the book.
And I didn't know this,
the word compassion of root origin means,
'to suffer together.'
- Yeah. Yeah.
- I thought that was...
And did you find
that when you were you conducting those interviews
that people were just opening up to each other
in different ways?
And that you were having such a, so much
of a deeper connection when you, when you kind
of just spoke the truth, even though it wasn't cool
or it wasn't effortless perfectionism?
Do you - What was your experience
of having those conversations?
Did you just, were you like, 'I wanna hug these people',
'I wanna tell them that they're okay'?
Were they sharing together, too, or just with you?
- No, I would say they were sharing together, too.
Like, cause some of the interviews
that I conducted were just one on one,
and some of them were groups, and it was like, oh yeah.
You know, we're suddenly talking
about all these things that we hadn't talked about before.
And I mean, this is something I, I've been aware
of this dynamic for the last 10 years because, you know,
my previous book was quiet about the power of introverts.
- Yeah.
- And, and I found with that too
that was also talking about something that had
not been sort of socially acceptable to discuss.
And so there too, I saw this phenomenon
of like, the minute you make it socially acceptable to talk
about what's really happening,
the floodgates open, and people are dying to talk about it.
- Oh, yes.
- And, and then they're connecting
in a much more authentic way.
(upbeat music)