It was 1939. Bonnie, 19, was a daughter of the Depression. A high school graduate with no hope of college. Didn’t even dream about it. No money for such things.
What was she to do? Most women in those days felt locked into four options – teaching, nursing, secretary, or getting their “MRS” Degree. Bonnie would have none of it. Oh, she was quite happy to get married, and would. But she would also stake her own claim.
She was a gifted writer and had learned photography. With those skills in hand, and no one but herself to support her – not that she would have allowed that anyway – she became a
stringer for most of the major newspapers in Michigan, where she had grown up. Just imagine the gumption it took for her to go into newspaper offices as a young girl and win assignments. She covered house fires, murders, politics, and car accidents. She secured an interview with General McArthur. She took the picture of Mr. Millionth. Who was that, you ask? He was the one millionth person killed in an auto accident, though that would come in the early 1950s. The picture became the cover for a national magazine
Bonnie’s mother, Marie, modeled an indomitable spirit. She had to. Her husband, Bonnie’s father, was a charming, delightful dreamer, and an alcoholic with a gambling streak. With four children to see to, Marie developed and ran a family business that sold whatever people needed and could afford. That included a soda fountain. Times were hard. She learned to make what came to be known as “grandma balls.” She could scoop ice cream so that the balls were hollow in the middle. A gallon of ice cream went a lot further.
Bonnie married. Had two boys. Like her mother, she, with her husband, started a business that supported the family adequately. But it came to stifle her.
In 1964, reading the want ads, she found this: “Wanted – young man to do public relations for ad agency clients.” She applied. She got an interview with the number two man in the agency. He was ready to hire her and took her into the president’s office. The president said: “I told you. No women.” Bonnie replied: “I’ll need a Selectric typewrite and I’ll need . . . “ listing other things that she would require.
She got the job. On her own initiative, because no one was going to do it for her, she made a name for herself with powerful New York City editors in order to get PR for the agency’s 
clients. One night she found herself on the set of the Tonight Show, talking with Doc Severinson, who led the show’s band at the time.
In 1985, at the end of her career, she was a VP of the firm. (Of course, she was paid only 75% of what the male VPs were paid.) She ran a department of 18 people. Many of them, both men and women, stayed in touch with her until she died some 25 years after her retirement.
What does Bonnie’s story have to do with EQ? What does it have to do with saving humanity? Keep in mind that the task at hand is to help humanity tame the reptile brain in all of us. Otherwise, we appear to be hell-bent on destroying ourselves. Bonnie’s story illustrates one person’s partial victory, partial being the best any of us can hope for. She had fear, plenty of it. She just didn’t let it win.
Had she let amygdala-based fear win, the world would have been deprived of her gifts. The people who worked for her may never have had the opportunities for success and talent development that she provided. The ripple effects of her contributions continue through people who knew her and the people they themselves came to influence.
Lest she come off like a saint, she was quite human. Particularly in her personal life, her amygdala got the better of her at times. She was scary when she got mad, and pathetic when she got scared. But when she was operating with her prefrontal cortex, using what we now call EQ, she was amazing.
Nobody had heard the term EQ in 1940, or 1964, or even 1985 (except for one guy who wrote an obscure doctoral dissertation about it that year). But that doesn’t mean that EQ didn’t
exist. It has since the dawn of human time. But, thanks to a growing mountain of research, we now have a much better understanding of and access to EQ. By understanding it, we can consciously help ourselves and others learn and improve the skills involved. As each of us does so, the whole human race benefits.
The ripple effect is how we will save humanity. Let’s save humanity one person at a time. The more we use our prefrontal cortex, where emotions and 
logic are integrated, the more powerful it becomes. More and more neural pathways become devoted to skills that become habitual. We not only have more access to our own best selves, we become less vulnerable to fears that lead us to hate others who dare to be different in some way. When we hate those people, we deprive ourselves of their wisdom, of what we might learn from them.
What might you be able to become, to accomplish, if you were able to better manage your fears? (Remember, Bonnie was courageous, not fearless.) How might you help yourself and others be a Bonnie?
A Little Book to Save Humanity (https://theeqpress.com) describes the benefits for humanity and individuals of building the skills of EQ. It also provides access to resources everyone can use to build their own EQ.
