This book. THIS BOOK. Saved my life today. It's only May 24, but it may be my book of the year. It's only 2020, but it may be my book of the century. My best friend handed it to me because I was weeping inconsolably about a boy who didn't notice me - but also about the pandemic, and my job, and the economy, and my brain. She said this would help - and it did. I feel comforted and validated in a way that I have rarely felt from other people, because this book told me that other people feel this mad most of the time too. 'Almost sane' is what the book says we strive for, by being polite and pessimistic and accepting and hopeful. I am not alone. "Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at maths; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness." YAAS QUEEN. "We have the appetites and destructive furies of primitive primates who have come into possession of thermonuclear warheads." DITTO. "[The sane] can - at their best - be dryly funny about the tragedy of being human. They lay bare the fears, doubts, longings, desires and habits that don't belong to the story we commonly tell ourselves about who we are." The core of vulnerability (my least favourite thing). "Emotional life is never done with showing us how much we might have to suffer for 'small' things." YOU ARE NOT WRONG THERE "Maturity involves accepting with good grace that we are all - like marionettes - manipulated by the past. And, when we can manage it, it may also require that we develop our capacity to judge and act in the ambiguous here and now with somewhat greater fairness and neutrality." This feels like holy writ to me. "The causes of our primal wounds are rarely outwardly dramatic but their effects are rarely insignificant. Such is the fragile base of childhood that nothing outwardly appalling needs to have happened for us to wind up inwardly profoundly scrambled." This is one of many times I had to stop and put the book down and hold my heart inside my chest because thank you. Thank you for helping me realise this vital fact. "[Parents] did not, all the while, ask that we thank them, understand them or show them sympathy. They didn't demand that we enquire how their days went or how they were sleeping at night (they weren't much). They treated us like royalty, so that we would later on be able to submit to the rigours and humiliations of an ordinary life. This temporarily one-sided relationship guaranteed our eventual ability to form a two-sided kind." No greater paean to parenthood has ever been written. "Diplomacy seeks to teach us how many good things can still be accomplished when we make some necessary accommodations with the crooked, sometimes touching and hugely unreliable material of human nature." <3 "We should stop worrying quite so much whether or not people like us, and make that far more interesting and socially useful move: concentrate on showing that we like them." OH YEAH JUST ATTACK THE CORE OF MY INSECURITY THE LIST OF 'CLASSICAL' ATTITUDES ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS "Two people should see a relationship as a constant opportunity to improve and be improved. When lovers teach each other uncomfortable truths, they are not abandoning the spirit of love. They are trying to do something very true to genuine love, which is to make their partners more worthy of admiration." WOW. "The only people we can think of as profoundly admirable are those we don't yet know very well." SICK BURN. "Those we love, we honour with our worst moods, our most unfair accusations, our most wounding insults. It is to our lovers that we direct blame for everything that has gone wrong in our lives; we expect them to know everything we mean without bothering to explain it; their minor errors and misunderstandings occasion our sulks and rages. By comparison [...] we are, in the company of our friends, our best selves." More oof. "The Classical person pays special attention to what can go wrong. They are very concerned to mitigate the downside. They are aware that most things could be a lot worse. Before condemning a government, they consider the standard of governments across history and may regard a current arrangement as bearable, under the circumstances. Their view of people is fundamentally rather dark. They believe that everyone is probably slightly worse than they seem. They feel we have deeply dangerous impulses, lusts and drives and take bad behaviour for granted when it manifests itself. They simply feel this is what humans are prone to do. High ideals make them nervous." Ha, well. One thing I congratulate myself on is that this sounds like me.
But this was SUCH a revelation
Because I should have suffered terrible abuse and neglect to have turned into such a highly anxious, frantic, fucked-up adult right? Instead of the perfectly pleasant, middle-class childhood I got
NOPE SAYS ALAIN
THAT TIME WHEN YOU ASKED YOUR MOTHER WERE YOU PRETTY AND SHE SAID YOU WERE 'PLEASANT-LOOKING' IS ENOUGH
And that's okay
Jesus Christ I love Alain and his co-pilots SO MUCH
AND WHY I WAS CRYING ABOUT THAT BOY
he's right though
Should be on the log-in screen of Tinder
And in school textbooks
