Privilege, Gratitude, Service

Or, How to Be Happier in Just Three Steps

Has anyone in the history of online disputes ever responded to the admonition to “Check your privilege!” by slinking away chastened, saying, like Job, “Wherefore I repent and abhor myself”?

Has anyone in all of human history ever been made happier by indulging feelings of envy and resentment?

No? Isn’t it rather the case that when someone lectures us about our privilege we respond by becoming defensive and angry? And isn’t it also true that when we nurse envy of others’ privileges—and self-pity for our lack thereof—we wind up feeling worse? Every single one of us is privileged in some way. The holiday season is the perfect opportunity to stop worrying about the privileges of others and to start feeling gratitude for our own. And the good news is that we can begin to feel happier by taking just three steps.

---

Step 1: Get to Know “Privileged” People

I am by no means preaching from my high horse (to mix a metaphor), because I have struggled with privilege envy myself. When I was in high school, I was an average-looking brunette with the figure of a telephone pole, and I resented the beautiful, buxom blondes who seemed to get all the attention, boyfriends, benefit of the doubt, and what have you. Attractive people earn more money than regular-looking people. They get drinks bought for them. They have an easier time getting hired. If Jerry Seinfeld is to be believed, they get out of traffic tickets:

Why didn’t I look like Christy Turlington? It wasn’t FAIR!

It is an incontrovertible scientific fact that Christy Turlington is the most beautiful woman in the world. Photo by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin from V magazine, here.

Three of my friends were beautiful blondes, and so I asked them about their experiences. I discovered that their beauty didn’t bring them much happiness. Yes, getting invited to go backstage to meet Van Halen¹ is flattering and all, but that’s not a particularly safe place for a seventeen-year-old girl. All three of my friends were extremely intelligent but were not taken seriously because of their looks. And so much attention, especially from older men, got oppressive. I realized that what I had taken to be privilege was at best a mixed blessing. When we feel angry that someone we know seems unfairly privileged, it helps to get to know them a bit better and listen to their story. We will almost certainly learn that their life is more complicated than we had thought, and that our envy is probably misplaced. For all we know, they envy us!

Step 2: Take a Privilege Inventory

Readers may be familiar with the tendentious BuzzFeed privilege quiz from a few years back.² That quiz is heavily weighted toward privilege based on race, sexual orientation, gender identity, and economic status, and it ignores many other—to my mind equally important—kinds of privilege. It also trades in absolutes; a single instance of unkind or biased treatment renders the quiz-takers less privileged. If I were the privilege-quiz czar, I would make the questions more forgiving and add the following criteria to any privilege inventory:

Physical Privileges

You may not be at the level of a Christy Turlington or an Idris Elba, but are you reasonably attractive?

I mean, seriously. People Magazine ought to just retire this award. I found this image here.

Are you taller than average?

Are you able to maintain a healthy weight by eating and exercising normally?

Are you able to move your body—walking, running, climbing stairs, dancing—as you wish?

Allowing for the occasional injury or illness and the normal twinges of aging, do you live mostly without pain?

Are you free of major illnesses?

How’s your tooth enamel? Still hanging in there?³

Do you have natural grace and/or athletic ability?

Intellectual Privileges

Are you good at something our culture values?

Even better, is your talent comparatively uncommon?

Do you learn relatively easily, or, if you have a learning disability, do you have help and support?

Have you had the opportunity to express your interests and talents in a meaningful way, through work or hobbies?

Family Privileges

While no family is perfect, is your family mostly loving, mostly healthy, and mostly supportive?

Are your parents still married? Or, if they’re divorced, did they protect you from their conflicts?

Are you allowed to choose whether, when, and to whom you will get married, with no danger of being forced into getting married at a time and to a person your family has chosen?

Is your family free of alcoholism and/or addiction? Or, if a family member was addicted at some point, did they get treatment and make amends?

Growing up, did you have enough money for at least the basics?

Are your parents, siblings, spouse, and children still living? Or, if not, did they live into old age?

National Privileges

Is your country at peace?

Is your country mostly governed by the rule of law?

Are you free from fear of being imprisoned or killed for your political beliefs?⁴

Are you able to practice your religion freely—or allowed not to be religious? Are you able to dress and live as you please, without being forced into clothing and practices you don’t want?

Are you able to choose work and activities based on your interests and talents rather than being forced by your government to do what they say?

Do the trains run on time? In other words, does life basically function smoothly, and do things usually work as they’re supposed to—without your having to bribe someone, that is?

Emotional Privileges

While everyone has the occasional anxieties, are you able to cope with yours?

Are you mostly free of mental illnesses, or able to get adequate treatment?

Are you resilient enough to be able to deal with life’s inevitable challenges, or, if not, do you have people in your life who help you handle setbacks?

Are you able to inspire and give love?

Are you able to make meaningful friendships?

Finally, are you able to feel gratitude, at least most of the time?

Readers may have noticed a preponderance of my favorite part of speech, the adverb (“mostly,” “basically,” etc.) throughout this inventory. Adverbs modify absolute statements and allow us to compromise. We live in an imperfect world; if we are expecting uncompromising perfection, we will inevitably be disappointed. But if, on the other hand, we consider a “good-enough life” to be a privilege, it is easier to be happy or at least content with our lot. In fact, even though our lives fall short of perfection, they can still be pretty terrific. How did we all do on this inventory? I doubt anyone was able to say yes to all thirty questions, but we could say yes to the majority of them, right? We all have a lot to be grateful for, don’t we?

Step 3: Use Your Privileges to Help Others

This final step is the most rewarding of all. Helping other people makes us happy. For example, I am tall, and I absolutely love retrieving items from the top shelf for the vertically-challenged. Ask me any time! (And I’m not alone; a tall friend told me that helping shorter folks in the grocery store “makes me feel like I’ve done something useful with my day.”) I also have immune-system privilege: I never get sick (or if I do it’s very mild and only lasts a day or so), and I enjoy doing the cooking, shopping, and errands for family and neighbors when they are sick.

My husband has computer-wizard privilege. Among his many talents is his ability to fix any computer problem, often just by giving the recalcitrant device a stern look, and sometimes just by standing in the doorway to the room that contains the offending object. (This is not an exaggeration.) And so he helps everyone who asks—family, friends, neighbors, even total strangers—with their computer problems. And secretly he gets a big kick out of being able to make their devices shape up and behave.

My friends and neighbors from my time in Prague and here in Switzerland are using their privilege as inhabitants of prosperous, functioning, peaceful countries to help Ukrainian refugees. A Russian friend volunteers as an interpreter, once even fielding questions over the phone for a Ukrainian woman who had an appointment at the gynecologist. Other friends have welcomed refugees into their homes, provided childcare, and donated money and household items. The mom of one of my son’s best friends has started a charity, Amity, to help the refugees, and several of my friends volunteer for it. They all welcome the opportunity to help victims of the war.

Jerry Seinfeld is lauded for supporting young comedians and for donating a hefty percentage of his income to charity. Christy Turlington uses her money and status to fund and publicize her charity, Every Mother Counts, which helps women around the world go through pregnancy and childbirth safely. Idris Elba supports many charities, including The Trust, which first helped him get his start as an actor.

While I can’t speak for Seinfeld, Turlington, or Elba, I can attest from personal experience and that of friends and family that using our privileges to help other people makes us feel great—and grateful.

---

One final thought about privilege. My dad recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday together with a huge crowd of friends and family. In my opinion, the most important privileges my parents enjoy are their health and the love and friendship of so many people. They earned this love through a lifetime of service to others as a teacher and a principal in low-income schools, as generous donors to many charities, and as good friends and neighbors to everyone they know. Just look at my dad’s smile, and see if you don’t agree that friendship, health, and love are the greatest privileges of all.

Photo by my sister-in-law Ro.

---

How about you, readers? What are some ways you are privileged? And how have you used your privileges to help other people? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

Speaking of privilege, if you lack immune-system privilege, you can benefit from Jewish Penicillin (chicken soup). As I write this post, my husband, who obtained his immune system at Crazy Eddie’s Bargain Basement,⁵ is languishing from a bad cold, and so I’m making chicken soup for him. Did you save the bones and scraps from your Thanksgiving turkey as I asked last week? Good! Because we’ll be using them today!

Chicken Soup from Scratch

For the stock:

1. Take all the turkey and/or chicken bones and scraps you’ve been saving out of the freezer and dump them into an enormous stock pot.

2. Add in a variety of coarsely-chopped vegetables and scraps. I always include a quartered onion, two potatoes, a large carrot, the leaves and part of a celery stalk, and a tomato. Mushrooms and bell peppers are good too, if you like them. The main thing is that the stock is a perfect excuse to use up those vegetables you have languishing in the produce drawer. (Don’t use broccoli or other cruciferous vegetables, though; they make the stock stinky.)

3. Add in your seasonings. I use a couple of bay leaves, several whole cloves, several sprigs of thyme and fresh parsley, a tablespoon of salt, and several grinds of black pepper. Again, if you have some aging herbs lying around, toss them in instead of tossing them out.

4. Fill the stock pot about three-quarters full of water. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Then, leave the stock to boil uncovered for at least an hour, stirring occasionally. Enjoy the delectable aromas that waft through the house.

5. Let the stock sit off the heat for another hour to achieve the Vulcan Flavor Meld.⁶

6. Strain the stock into a large bowl and discard the gunk. This recipe makes a lot of stock, so you will probably want to put half of it into jars to freeze for another time. The other half will go in your soup.

For the chicken:

1. After you start your stock boiling, put 4 chicken thighs (skin on and bone in) in a Pyrex baking dish and drizzle olive oil over them. Toss with a bit of salt and pepper.

2. Pour about 1/4c dry white wine plus about 1c chicken stock (I just use store-bought) over everything. Strew whole garlic cloves and sprigs of thyme throughout the pan.

3. Bake at 325F (160C) for about 1-1/2 hours, until done. Allow the chicken to cool.

4. Remove the meat and set aside half for chicken-salad sandwiches and dice up the other half for the soup. Save the juices that remain in the pan for the soup.

5. Save the skin and bones in the freezer for the next time you make chicken stock. Thus the serpent eats its own tail.

For the soup:

1. Dice one large carrot and one large celery stalk and steam until tender.

2. Pour your stock into a medium-sized pot, add in the drippings from the roast chicken, the carrot and celery, and the diced chicken, and bring to a boil.

3. Add in 1/2c tiny macaroni, orzo, or other small pasta. Cook until the pasta is soft. Hooray! Your soup is ready, and hopefully your loved ones will be feeling better soon.

1. This is a real example. Van Halen would have their roadies scout the audience for beautiful girls and women and give out backstage passes to the prettiest ones. My friend, probably wisely, chose not to avail herself of this dubious opportunity.

2. As an example of its bias, the quiz has nine questions about race and seventeen about sexual orientation and gender identity, but only one about physical disability, and none about whether the quiz-taker grew up in a family free of abuse or addiction. In addition, all the questions are weighted equally, but some (e.g. about rape) concern serious, life-altering traumas, while others (e.g. having a roommate at some point or never having gone to summer camp) are just normal life for most people.

The original quiz also had a question about whether appropriate hair-care products were available at nearby stores, which even the editors apparently thought was so trivial as to undercut the seriousness of the whole venture, because they took it out.

3. This is a reference to an incident at a childbirth-preparation class my husband and I attended shortly before our son was born. As an ice-breaker, the leader asked everyone to tell the group one thing they hoped their child would inherit from their spouse. Everyone else said things like “his sense of humor” or “her kindness” or “her beautiful smile.” Then they got to my husband, who said, and I quote, “I would like our son to inherit my wife’s tooth enamel.”

My husband wants to note for the record that he was the only one in the group who named something that was actually heritable. And in his defense, he has had multiple cavities and I’ve never had a single one. Now that our kids are adults and have never had cavities either, it does indeed seem as though they lucked out and inherited my tooth enamel.

4. I know personally two people who were political prisoners: The father of one of my son’s friends was imprisoned because he opposed the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and the husband of a South African friend was imprisoned because he refused to serve in the military during the apartheid era.

5. Thank you to my friend Theresa for this line.

6. Thank you to my husband for this line.