In the first month of this year, I wrote on the second page of my notebook that 2020 would be the year of self-reliance. It was going to be the year I went freelance and the year I started this newsletter and now it just seems apt. I did not know it would become the year of self-isolation where self-reliance would evolve from a novel pursuit into a necessity. Yet here we are. All jointly tasked with the chore of learning to become better at being with ourselves (if we are fortunate enough to have a home, and the daily monotony of isolating in it).
For the privileged, the last couple of months have served as an uncomfortable yet reflective pause in our lives. Time to finally make sourdough or establish a significant yoga habit and space to sit with that quiet voice inside our heads that may be saying we should restructure our days when they can start again. But this compulsory break, giving us enough time to really think about how we want to live moving forward, has been juxtaposed with the reality that we are tiny, insignificant beings with little control over the outcome. That life is often unpredictable and unfair. That there are forces far greater than our own self-control at play. That pandemics do not go away with blind optimism. That “the great equalizer” has only made the inequalities within our countries more visible.
While I have felt an odd sense of calm over the last few weeks (in a strange twist, some people with preexisting anxiety have felt symptoms alleviate during isolation), I began the pandemic crying in supermarket aisles; unable to unsee the fear in the elderly’s eyes or the staff behind the meat counter. The novel slowness of our days has been mirrored with images of mass graves at Hart Island and Italian military vehicles transporting bodies and anticipatory grief and, later, grief. We may have more time but also more uncertainty, and if we still have a job, we are questioning whether we will keep it.
The arrival of this juxtaposition may just bring an end to the self-indulgent era we were living in, where our lives were stacked against a sense of always wanting, or needing to be, more. It has taken our constant striving and turned it inward, representing something closer to gratitude. I think it has at least stripped us of the delusion that we are the centre of the universe. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. We live on it for 100 years if we’re lucky. There have been depressions and world wars and pandemics well before the one we are experiencing and, if anything, they have taught us that we are not always in control, that the light sometimes goes red, that sh** happens. Yet we forge on.
Joan Didion once wrote that adversity is the singular preexisting condition necessary to develop self-respect (which is essentially the ability to take responsibility for your own life) and this moment is delivering that adversity to us all in spades. I think self-reliance also requires adversity before it can bloom, for adversity is the cost of being human. In the first month of this year, on the first page of my notebook, I wrote down a quote from John Berger’s book, Confabulations. It read: “To be a human being is the main thing above all else. And that means to be firm and clear and cheerful in spite of everything and anything, because howling is the business of the weak. To be a human being means to joyfully toss your entire life in the giant scales of fate if it must be so, and at the same time to rejoice in the brightness of every day and the beauty of every cloud.”
That quote might be particularly hard to read now, if you read it as blind optimism, but I wrote it down because, to me, it reads as self-reliance. To take the hand you’re dealt, and play it knowing that the odds will not always be stacked in your favour. To keep going because, well, what choice do we have? This newsletter, for lack of a better definition, is about just that. Experiencing the rhythms of the human condition and life itself; taking the joys and the losses and finding some meaning in the meaningless. I have stated that this newsletter covers ‘occasional thoughts on selfhood’ because understanding our identities helps us move through the world with greater ease, but it is not limited to selfhood because our external world is also important. I will probably write about long-forgotten virtues and current events and things far bigger than our internal worlds because this moment has also taught us that self-reliance, on its own, will not get us there. We need our communities, our people. And we need to help one another out. This newsletter begins with selfhood, though, because my writing is mostly driven by how I feel, if only to make sense of things far greater than my world. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
This New Yorker feature by Jia Tolentino on why ‘mutual aid’ has become mainstream during the pandemic - and what we can learn from it.
The New York Times Magazine staff writer, Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s op-ed on the joy of having plans cancel themselves. Made me laugh. If you haven’t read her novel, Fleishman Is In Trouble, order it immediately.
This wild GQ profile of Robert Pattinson, who opens up about isolation, being Batman, and more.
I’ve been re-watching a lot of stand-up lately, so thought I'd recommend one of my favourites. It's arguably Dave Chapelle’s best set, The Bird Revelation, which I’d highly recommend if you’re a fan. It's on Netflix. (He was slammed for being too tough on the MeToo movement in this set, but I think he had good intentions. Entirely worth it for the ‘Pimp story’ at the end.)
If you haven’t listened to The Daily podcast episode on the Ahmaud Arbery shooting, this is heartbreaking but necessary listening.
It’s a few weeks old, but this excellent Vogue article by Jia Tolentino on turning to self-tanner - or the ‘Quarantan’ - during this time. I appreciate her writing, but I've mentioned her twice here, so that's obvious.
My ‘2020, The Year of Self-Reliance’ playlist which is a mixed bag of genres and old and new; basically any song I stumble across over the year that I fancy. Can't promise you'll enjoy it.
Oh, and the aforementioned John Berger book, Confabulations, obviously.
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