The Sweet Spot summary

Recently some of my friends have gotten into winter dipping. It’s this thing where in the bright, crisp coldness of winter, they go out to a lake, strip down into their swimming gear, brace themselves against the freezing air, and then, with their hands raised above their heads, wade into the icy water until they’re neck-deep. It’s so cold they can only be in there for a few seconds. But when they come back, they aren’t shivering intensely, as you might expect – they’re buzzing with energy, laughing, sparkling with an almost uncontainable joy.You probably have your own version of that type of experience, where you put yourself in an intense situation to feel something that’s both uncomfortable and blissful – too-much, but in a good way. These experiences all fall under a category researcher Paul Rozin calls “benign masochism.”Masochism was described by Freud as a pathology, a sign that we are mentally ill. I mean, choosing to hurt ourselves goes against all our survival instincts, doesn’t it? But benign masochism involves experiences that aren’t harmful or destructive in the long run. These kinds of experiences can actually make our lives more pleasurable. 

Okay, now you might be wondering: How could short-term pain lead to pleasure?

But contrast isn’t the only reason that people choose punishing experiences. There’s another very important motive, and this is it: pain can get us out of our heads. 

To illustrate this, let’s look at the practice of BDSM. BDSM stands for “Bondage, Domination, Submission, Masochism.” It’s a sexual practice that’s been popularized by books like 50 Shades of Grey, and it’s a practice that involves power play, where one partner dominates another, sometimes with the use of pain. Participants could be tied up, or whipped, or spanked, or choked, or even shocked with an electric current. A very important proviso here, though: BDSM is consensual. All participants explicitly agree on what they’re comfortable doing, before they get into it. And like other benignly masochistic practices, the one experiencing the pain always, always has the power to stop it. And that’s absolutely essential to how BDSM is performed. 

But there’s something missing – there must be more. The joy of being in the flow, or mastering new skills, isn’t enough to explain why people sign up for very grueling and dangerous situations, like climbing Mt. Everest, or going to war. For that, we need to introduce another important concept: meaning.

Renowned psychiatrist Viktor Frankl studied human resilience and flourishing in horrific circumstances. He found that people who felt their lives had a broader purpose – or meaning – were more resilient. In contrast to people who had no sense of their own lives having any significance, those equipped with a sense of purpose were able to rebuild their lives after great loss.Moments ago, I talked about the joys of effort and mastery – of doing a task for its own sake. But that’s only part of the story, because we don’t value effort equally. It might be tiring to climb up and down a flight of steps 5,000 times and, similarly, to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. But while the former activity seems kind of pointless, maybe even a bit crazy, climbing a mountain seems brave and noble, even if there’s suffering involved. That’s because it’s seen as being a meaningful goal. In the same vein, if we want to understand why people volunteer to fight in dangerous wars, we have to consider the sense of meaning and purpose derived from that choice. What, for new recruits, is attractive about war? Well, for one, it gives them a sense of belonging – that they’re important and fighting a worthwhile cause. Yes, they may be sacrificing their lives, but their feeling is that it’s not for nothing. It’s for their group, or their country, or an ideal like “liberty.” It makes them feel like their lives have value, that they mean something because of the potential legacy of that sacrifice.But the decision to go to war may seem like a more fringe, extreme choice. A lot of us wouldn’t find the pull for meaning from that to be as strong. So let’s introduce a more popular choice in this pursuit for meaning – having children.

In 1988, Life Magazine asked the Dalai Lama, Maya Angelou and over a hundred other luminaries of the time, to reflect on what made life meaningful. As you can imagine, their answers differed widely. But they can be categorized as falling under four main themes.

Firstly, they described meaningful experiences as those which allowed them to connect with other people, and feel a sense of belonging.