One of the Biggest Lessons I Ever Learned was from Star Trek

How an unwinnable exercise helped me through a tough time.

Allow me to set the scene for you. It is April of 2017. In the past six months, I have lost just about all of my money, my relationship with my family is over, and one of my cats has died. I am driving to my mother-in-law’s house with my partner. We are sitting in silence.

As I drove down a busy street during rush hour, I felt an urge to swerve the car into oncoming traffic and end my life. Everything was terrible, I reasoned, so there was no reason to go on.

I didn’t do that, of course. I was able to reason with myself that ending my partner’s life, as well as the lives of the passengers of whatever cars I hit, wasn’t an ideal situation. Plus, there was no guarantee that I would die in the attempt. Still, I fought that urge for about 20 minutes, most of the drive.

At that point in my life, I hadn’t had serious suicidal urges for quite a long time, and I haven’t had quite that strong of an urge in the time since. I was managing my emotions throughout that whole period with the help of a lot of people and a lot of upbeat media. I think my partner and I watched Ouran High School Host Club twice during that period because it’s such a fluffy anime that we could actually get a bit of serotonin from it.

One of the things that got me through that period, though, was a meme. It is a picture of Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation with the classic meme text over it, which reads:

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.

That single meme contributed to getting me through a bunch of awful stuff in my life at that point. The thought that I could have done everything right at that point in my life and still had such a terrible outcome was, oddly, reassuring. It felt good to know that life can sometimes beat you up for no reason, even if you didn’t screw anything up.

This particular line refers to the Kobayashi Maru in Star Trek. The Kobayashi Maru is an unwinnable scenario that is used as a training exercise. The point is not to get a good outcome, as the scenario is designed to always end in failure, but rather to see how a cadet reacts in such a situation. There is no correct resolution — rather, it is a test of character.

Sometimes, life tests our character. And, when faced with failure, how we respond to it is important. Thankfully, I was able to stop myself from ending my life, and now, four years later, I think I’m doing pretty well. I managed to recover financially, and my mental and emotional health is much better, although still not back to what it was.

Still, that was a very hard point in my life that I don’t care to repeat. I was emotionally, mentally, and financially wrecked, and my relationships with my family were almost all destroyed. That’s not fun for anyone.

However, I will always keep that particular lesson in mind. Sometimes, life puts you in an unwinnable scenario, and how you react will be just as important as what actions you take. The outcome will have always been the same; your reactions, however, will define how you come out of the situation.

I endeavor to do my best and to hold to my values in any situation. By and large, it has gotten me through a lot of bad situations for the better. And, in the scenario that I described above where there was no good outcome, at the end of the day, I am ultimately proud of how I acted through those awful months.

Honestly, at this point, that’s the most I can ask for.

If you liked this, please subscribe to my publication, Thing a Day. I publish something every day on a variety of topics, so you never know what you’re going to see!

Here are some other things I’ve written:

If you’re not already a Medium member, I encourage you to subscribe. It’s just $5 per month (or $50 for a yearlong subscription), and you can read an unlimited number of my articles as well as unlimited articles from tens of thousands of Medium writers. Your subscription fees support the writers on this platform, and if you click this referral link or sign up through my email subscription below, part of your subscription fee will go toward supporting my writing and enabling me to continue publishing a Thing a Day.