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Hi friends!
Sitting down to write in this space every two weeks is quite a mystifying thing sometimes because it really cements just how much happens in such a short space of time. I've often felt as if this year is passing by so treacherously, so mundanely, but as I write below, sometimes that is exactly what propels forward motion.
Let's get to it...
I cannot count the number of girlfriends that have come to me in the last year, utterly floored, having just been dumped. I’ve been one of them. How many tears I’ve seen fall in the disbelief of not having had any clear reason as to why. The disorientation in the infinite questioning that arrives as a symptom of a lack of closure. All they were left with instead, was an empty space in which their partners seemingly, simply, took flight.
And so, a-la Carrie Bradshaw, I can’t help but wonder: why do so many men not have the balls to simply tell the truth?
Last night I read an article in the September issue of Elle in which the writer explored moving on from heartbreak without having had closure. The consensus was that nobody owes you their truth and so you should try to find peace with sometimes never finding it. I agree with the advice, but like, surely giving somebody an explanation is just the fucking decent thing to do, no? Especially towards someone you loved yesterday?
I have found my aggravation for a society so lacking in everyday courage to soar throughout the last few months of increasingly existential times. Found myself less tolerant towards anything that which is not the truth.
The pandemic has meant a lot of us have never been more aware of our own mortality, and out of such a sobering realisation, I’d hoped people would find the risk of not saying the thing or doing the thing outweighing the potential humility of it being thrown back in their face or having it fail. But I don’t feel as if this is the case. Perhaps we need longer for the lessons of this time to trickle in, but it just disheartens me to not feel as if I am witnessing more bravery as a result of actual YOLO epiphanies.
I don't even mean grandiose gestures. I am very aware that life is not like a movie. And that as a species we are very much prone to avoiding embarrassment at all costs — so much so that all anybody else sees of us is a mere microcosm to that which exists inside of us.
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer made some interesting observations which could explain why I find this all so perplexing and paradoxical. He believed that life is a pendulum that swings between the two poles of human life: ‘boredom’ and the other being a want/need/lack of desire. When you want something you pursue it, but then when you have it, you proceed once again to boredom because you aren’t satisfied and want something else. We are constantly moving back and forth between action as a result of boredom as a result of a lack of contentment.
Boredom is what propels us into motion, which I guess is why I am so surprised to be not seeing more ramifications of loosened inhibitions: have none of you not been bored out of your mind this year?!
When Bukowski said: ”We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing,” I felt that. I find the general cowardliness of the human race unbearable most of the time — I just wish we were all braver in our truths, if only for a more exciting existence. I wish people would more openly spill their guts, show their cards, choose vulnerability, risk humility.
I don’t particularly subscribe to the whole having a ‘word of the year’ thing because I like the idea of not defining myself to pursue or to be just one thing. But one thing I did say to myself at the start of 2020 was that I wanted to be brave. I have the Charlie Mackesy line “‘What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever said?’ asked the boy,” pinned up on this year’s vision board. It’s to remind me to shoot the shot and be willing to risk the miss. To send the text. To speak the uncomfortable. To bear my greater truth. To reveal my disparities. To guard my boundaries by saying no more often. To not let racist, homophobic, misogynistic comments pass by without calling them out. To lean into the life I want.
I have noticed that once you show up to others from a place of greater truth, they are more likely to be honest in return. Which can be humbling, to say the least (oh the punches my ego has taken lately), but it is empowering. The time that would've been spent ruminating on all that is left unspoken is instead spent more productively on what is fact. And as a result, things happen.
Because although you might not owe anyone your truth, I'd rather my fear not end up as someone else's burden. I'd rather walk around free from the weight of it off my back.
Thank you for reading!
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