#63: On disillusionment, splitting the bill, and disliking your friend's s.o.

Good morning!

How are you? My world continues to be deeply dreary. I had no idea caring for a terminal pet could be so disruptive on every level. I’m going to write about it soon (aren’t you so excited), but this week I was happy to get my mind off things a bit for Dear Baby. Today I answered:

1. Do you think it's possible for women to see themselves as feminist and progressive whilst expecting chivalry from men in a more traditional sense?

2. Most of my life feels unspectacular compared to the life I’ve always dreamed of leading. Am I being delusional? How can I cultivate a rich life?

3. How do you navigate (really, really) not liking the person your friend is dating? Is it worth it letting this get in the way of your friendship?

And on Tuesday, with fan-favorite Danny Nelson (he’s back!), we’ll be discussing/debating my answers to the above questions and also exploring two more:

4. A higher-up at work coached me to try to stop leading with ‘I think’—to just make the statement and it'll be stronger. I notice you use ‘I think’ a lot. Thoughts?

5. In some of your writing, you talk about ‘performing personality,’ which I've thought about often. When do you notice yourself performing your personality, and how do you avoid it?

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On living a charmed life

“I've always held this enchanting but embarrassing notion that I'll live a literary, artistic sort of life and see publishing success and fame, mingle with other literary types at fun dinner parties, live in culturally rich cities, date a mildly famous indie musician (lol). I recognize the specificity of these things, but I also feel like they aren't super outlandish (with the exception of the indie musician) to the point that I'm denying myself happiness if it comes in other forms, but more so just a reflection of me knowing what I want. If anything, I feel like my curiosity and openness sometimes leads me astray, down a more meandering path. I try to cultivate happiness in smaller ways and I do try to get outside my comfort zone but so many of the things I want seem so far outside the realm of possibility. I want to live a special kind of life where cool things both happen to me by chance and happen because I go in search of them, like in the books I read, but so far most of life feels unspectacular in comparison...and I know comparison is the thief of joy and we are also coming out of a pandemic and that expectations lead to disappointment, but it seems impossible to go through life and maintain a sense of direction without them. Am I being delusional and setting myself up for disappointment? How can I cultivate an inspiring, rich life?”

Your dream life reminds me of a comment I once read about dream jobs, which is that we often don’t know what we really want because we’re too focused on the specifics. Here was the actual comment, which an anonymous person left under an article I once wrote for Man Repeller (I never forgot it):

“First, make a list of what you enjoy and do not enjoy about your job, but stripped of any language that ties it literally to the profession. My husband did this when he was desperate to get out of retail (selling Apple products) at 28 but clueless as to what to do next. Likes: ‘sitting one on one with an elderly person and helping them get a better grasp of technology, without an agenda,’ (stripped down to ‘teaching skills one-on-one’) and ‘helping customers figure out what they actually need’ (‘personally driven research’). Dislikes: ‘teaching big groups of strangers who just wandered in’ (probing revealed it was the size of groups and the anonymity that felt scary), and ‘using fake friendliness or using corporate-speak’ (he prefers smaller communities where he really knows everyone). After half an hour, we had a list that described being a school librarian. He went to grad school for it—a scary leap of faith!—and LOVES it. He's five years in and totally blossomed. But getting those preferences down on paper, divorced from the job itself, was helpful. It also helped him see that he had spent six years building skills that could apply elsewhere, not just wasting time.”

When we’re kids, our dream lives are pulled from movies and storybooks, and as we get older, we adjust our expectations. That doesn’t mean our childhood dreams are totally irrelevant; they definitely tell us something about who we are or what we want, but only in the most literal terms: astronaut, movie star, neighborhood spy. How those interests manifest in our real lives are often a lot more figurative: adventurous, theatrical, curious. The ambition you’ve described in your question isn’t exactly childish—famous writer with an indie musician boyfriend and literary friends—but it’s just as fantastical. Which isn’t to say you can’t have or pursue that life (some people really do become astronauts…), but I think you could benefit from doing something similar to the above exercise. Can you boil this dream down to more qualitative desires? Can you prioritize reading, art, and intellectual stimulation without prescribing a life you’ve only ever seen depicted by others through the hazy glow of nostalgia? What does it actually mean to “mingle with literary types at fun dinner parties”? I can tell you from experience that what makes a dinner party fun has little to do with literature.

Of course, you could pursue some of this literally. You could move to a cultural hub, seek out friends who share your literary taste, try to publish some of your writing and even date a musician. But my suspicion is you’re more charmed by this life in theory than in reality. What you’re describing isn’t actually a list of desires but an idea. You want the music to swell in the right places. You want the hero's journey with a happy ending. You want the cleaning montage without the chores! The bad news is life isn’t like that, no matter how expertly people edit it to appear that way on TikTok or in memoirs. The good news is it’s infinitely richer. More magical, more painful, more complicated. Better than the photographs, weirder than we imagined, different than we expect. It is more than the sum of the MASH details: spouse, job, city, money, number of kids. 

I sense that you’re a bit paralyzed by other people’s perspectives. Not just because you’ve described a good life the way someone might pitch a movie script, but by the way you seem to parrot other people’s ideas: “I know comparison is the thief of joy and we are also coming out of a pandemic and that expectations lead to disappointment but it seems impossible to go through life and maintain a sense of direction without them.” Such an anxious sentence! I empathize with how hard you’re trying to get this right (seriously), but you’re not going to convince me or anyone that it’s healthy to compare your life to the spiritual equivalent of a sepia photograph from 1977, or an essay by Nora Ephron. I promise you your life is just as magical and weird as anyone else’s if you’re present enough to witness it. The curiosity and openness you said you feel? They might be the most ambitious things about you.

Although I can’t find the exact quote, I think it was the philosopher Alan Watts who said you cannot enjoy a sunset and think about enjoying a sunset at the same time. The good part is the experience, not the reflection of the experience. There’s no telling whether you’d be happy as a famous writer with a famous musician boyfriend attending fancy literary dinner parties in Paris or whatever—because the vignette is missing all the crucial details. But I can guarantee your happiest moments would not be spent thinking, I am happy because of my literary fame. They would be far less tethered to your status, because status is not an experience. A conversation is an experience. Sitting on a bench in the sun is an experience. Loving someone, making something, going somewhere—these are the experiences that make up a good life. So my advice is to start imagining what you want in more textured, experiential terms. Break down this image you’ve created for emotional parts and figure out how you can bring more of them into your own life right now. The rest, I suspect, is just ego.

Any advice for this week’s questioners?

Inspired by long-time advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s newsletter, I’ll be opening up comments on Dear Baby this week for readers to weigh in with their own experiences and advice for the questioners, if they have any. To weigh in, subscribe and head over to the official Q&A post on haleynahman.substack.com.

Have a good week!
Haley

This month a portion of subscriber proceeds will be redistributed to National Bail Out, a collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers, and activists focused on ending pre-trial detention and mass incarceration through community-based advocacy.

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