#198: Trying to see something
Hey! I’d planned to skip the newsletter this week because of the holiday, then I changed my mind, then I changed it again, then changed it one more time (brave, not neurotic!), which is why I’m here now. Yes, I’ve dared to use Thanksgiving as a “content peg,” and am going to share some thoughts on gratitude, which I think is a more layered topic than we sometimes give it credit for. Maybe you’ll relate.
I once heard that, over time, couples begin to perceive themselves as more different from each other than they really are (or at least as more different than they once thought). This is counter-intuitive—the opposite of popular notions of convergence, but when you sit with it a little longer, it makes sense, like the way identical twins look more distinct as you get to know them.
When Avi and I first met, I couldn’t get over how much we had in common. At the height of my crush, I would list out all our similarities in my head as if reciting a prayer: same politics, same humor, same questions, same desires, same sick little judgments. We could spend 72 hours together and not once diverge on what we wanted to eat, do, discuss. Even the way we danced seemed unusually synchronous, like behind the song there was another beat only we could hear.
But eight years later, I’m much more conscious of how we differ. So much so that if you asked me to describe him, I’d probably start with all the qualities we don’t share, like that he loves to cook, play guitar, read history books, watch Stanley Kubrick movies, debate who killed JFK. When I think of our dynamic at home, I think about how he’s reticent to change things in our apartment too quickly, or how he’s finicky about where I place the wooden spoon when I’m cooking, or his tendency to stack his art supplies instead of put them away.
These things aren’t problems necessarily, they’re merely visible to me because they contrast with my way of doing things, my “neutral.” Whether I find them charming or annoying is less relevant (depends on the day), the point is that the more seamless aspects of our relationship don’t catch my attention as easily anymore, and that’s by design. Thinking about them too much would be like going for a walk and thinking too much about the ground.
I think it’s interesting how this happens—the way the highest functioning aspects of our machinery, however miraculous or unique, disappear into the background of our perception. I thought of this in a more personal context the other day, when a friend was feeling depressed about a lack of momentum in her career. She was plagued by memories of how she imagined her mid-thirties might look when she was 10 years younger, and couldn’t ignore how short she’d fallen. But to me it was clear how untrue that was—how much she had now that she’d once longed for: a happy long-term relationship, a great apartment, a close circle of friends, a strong artistic perspective with clear goals. She was grown up now, a little more cynical sure, but with a sense of herself and the world that she didn’t even know to want back then. These things were invisible to her, and why wouldn’t they be? They were the air she breathed every day.
I think of this like a personal Overton window (although I know the analogy doesn’t make perfect sense). A kind of private tunnel vision that rearranges our reality so that our highs and lows are defined by only the most immediate wins and losses, with everything else rendered irrelevant—the hard fought habits we’ve kept, the old lessons that stuck, the skills that come easily to us, the rhythms we’ve found with the people we love, the deep breaths we miss when we’re sick, the years of incremental work in establishing ourselves and our lives that are still paying off all the time. If you consider yourself ambitious, whether in a quantifiable sense (financial growth) or a softer one (therapeutic growth, say), this tunnel vision might feel natural. But I think it can be a little sickening to take it as the whole view —to never lean back, look around, be grateful, as some might call it, but also more perceptive about our situations.
One way to get a better view is to make or consume art. In October, Elif Batuman wrote a funny newsletter about the idea of “being butthurt,” and in it she talks about art’s capacity to help us transcend the dulling qualities of habit. She quotes Viktor Shklovsky: “habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war… and art exists so that one may recover the sensation of life.” Then she goes on: “the trick in writing/life… is to figure out how to import a chunk of the past into the present, so your present self can feel all the things you’ve forgotten.” I relate to this. Whether I’m writing or taking in someone else’s work, I’m most moved when art makes me more aware of the breadth and depth of life. That’s what I’m after, that feeling of my perception bursting wide open.
That’s not the only way to access gratitude, obviously. But the most popular ways often feel a little rote to me, like listing things out in a journal (a sweet, healthy practice I’ve never taken to). In recent years I’ve been more interested in what it looks like to be grateful in practice day to day, less literally. This comes after a period of hesitation around it—I once wrote about how as a young adult I recruited gratitude as a tool for my complacency, and had to learn to stop placating myself with declarations of how lucky I was, and instead learn to corral my will beyond my circumstances. But now I find myself in a stretch of life when all I want to do is think about how lucky I am, and corral my will deeper into my circumstances, learn to see what’s already here in higher definition, with more color. A struggle inward rather than upward or outward, a reorientation away from growth in an objective sense.
I’m working on becoming more aware, ultimately—just as good at noticing what’s always been here as what’s just arrived or hasn’t yet. No surprise I’m basically just describing mindfulness, one of the oldest human pursuits, increasingly urgent. Sometimes I think of myself as unambitious these days, mistaking this downshift for stagnancy, which scares me, but I try to remind myself that slowness is not the enemy.
Hope you had a nice holiday!
Welcome back,
Haley
p.s. In case you missed it, here’s last week’s 15 things.