Earlier this month Jerry Greenfield, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s, resigned.
His reason: the brand’s parent company, Unilever, has steadily eroded the social mission that made Ben & Jerry’s more than ice cream.
When the merger was signed years ago, protections for the company’s values were written into the agreement. On paper, they were supposed to hold forever. In practice, they didn’t.
Jerry finally walked away.
That story got me thinking about the merger agreements we draft with ourselves. I’ve made plenty of declarations that sounded airtight at the time.
I’ll never drink three glasses of wine in one night again. I’ll never buy something impulsively again. I’ll never talk to that person who hurt me again.
And yet I’ve done all of those things. The promises looked good in theory but dissolved in practice.
When I downloaded Instagram again after months away, I told myself it was a strategic move for my book launch. And in some ways it is. I’m leaving digital breadcrumbs, seeing if they lead anywhere. But once I was back in the brine of highlight reels I realized nothing had changed in the feed.
What has changed is me. I no longer feel as drained after scrolling because I’ve grown since the last time I was caught up in it. I’ve had conversations with others who struggle with the same tension, and hearing their stories showed me there is a way forward.
It is possible to play a different game when you change the rules for yourself and decide how you will engage.
The same thing happened when someone from my past resurfaced. Their sudden reappearance jolted my nervous system at first, sending me into an electric down spiral of tears and confusion for about an hour. But instead of letting old patterns and narratives hold me captive, I pulled myself out of the emotional tailspin, seeing clearly how much work I’ve done to grow since they disappeared. I could look myself in the eye and say to myself: I am no longer held hostage by what they do or don’t do.
That is empowerment in action.
All of this reminds me of a comment I saw under the Ben & Jerry’s news. The writer quoted George Bernard Shaw: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” He was referring to the endless online bickering we see every day. Tiresome, unpleasant, and ultimately futile. However loud we shout, we still have to live with people who see things differently.
The same is true within us. When the past self argues with the emerging self, wrestling only leaves us exhausted.
The deeper problem is that the Internet has flattened our capacity to sit with complexity and contradictions. It rewards hot takes and three second clips. It trains us to pick a side, to declare ourselves once and for all.
What gets stolen in that process is the chance to do real work. The kind of work that takes time and structure. The kind that unfolds through study or within a cohort of others. The kind that lets growth happen on a deeper plane than dopamine hits and zombie brain.
Growth is never clean. Whether you are building a company or a life, the real task is not to eliminate contradiction or complexity but to live with it long enough for something new to form. Sometimes that means walking away, like Jerry did, when the core mission has been hollowed out. Other times it means refusing to wrestle, resisting the pull to flatten your own story into a headline.
Playing it better might not mean louder opinions or quicker certainty.
It might mean giving contradiction a little more room to breathe.
If this essay resonated with you, my new book It’s Not You, It’s the Algorithm digs deeper into these questions of values, contradictions, and what the Internet has quietly taken from us. The book comes out soon, and I’d love for you to be part of the launch.