Questions About Confidence

 

By Sam Brown

What do people mean when they say they want to be more confident? What do they mean when they say they are attracted to or desire confidence in a romantic partner?

These are serious questions. I really don’t completely understand what the desire for confidence is all about.

I’ve been thinking about this for at least a year. Maybe longer. I’d hear about or read someone listing the traits they’re seeking in a date or potential spouse and many people, both men and women, would say “confidence” and I’d ask myself the same question and think “confidence” isn’t even in my top ten of desirable traits, so what gives? Why is confidence so important to so many people in romantic relationships?

Last year in a BBC article titled “Does Confidence Really Breed Success?”, I read this by psychologist Jean Twenge:

What’s really become prevalent over the last two decades is the idea that being highly self-confident – loving yourself, believing in yourself – is the key to success.

Now the interesting thing about that belief is it’s widely held, it’s very deeply held, and it’s also untrue.

Also:  “psychologists rarely use the word ‘confidence’.”

So why do many people desire this thing that is not the key to success? What do people really want when they say they desire confidence?

I touched on the topic of confidence last year in my post “The Future Will Belong to Those with Empathy”. The point I made about the desire for and focus on confidence possibly being related to the fact that we are increasingly called on to sell ourselves may partly explain why people think confidence is key.

Do people really want to be able to sell themselves well? Do they what this in other people?

Andrew W.K.’s advice to a person who lost their confidence and wants it back again made me start wondering about confidence again.

Does the letter writer want to feel confident?…

I’ve lost my confidence. I used to be able to wake up in the morning knowing who I was, feeling sure of myself and ready to take on the world. But over the past few years, I’ve felt myself slipping away and it’s come to the point where I no longer recognize myself.

…Or look confident?

Yet when I look at my life, I feel boring — like there’s nothing outwardly special or impressive about me these days.

Is confidence swagger? Or as Andrew W.K. suggests “an (unseen) inner conviction”? Can you be confident without feeling confident?

These questions are sincere because I’m really unsure what people are talking about when they are talking about confidence. Is it a feeling like happiness? Is it necessary for success or does success breed confidence? Are people delusional when they seek confidence? Is it magical thinking to believe confidence will abolish all fear and doubt in your life? Is it a lazy substitute for actually becoming skilled at something? Is it a cheap substitute for simply being a decent human being?

I don’t understand those who believe that they should believe in their ability to be and do whatever you want before they do it. I don’t understand those who think they should always feel good about themselves.

I believe in gaining skills and abilities and trusting yourself. But you’re never done. You never arrive at the point of complete mastery and complete self-belief. Ever.

There’s no place anywhere inside of me that believes I will feel good all the time and in any situation. No place at all.

So I never seek to be confident. I never seek it in other people. I will never be completely sure and I don’t believe other people can be completely sure of anything either all the time.

What will confidence bring to a romantic relationship? I’d put kindness, reasonableness, and the ability to communicate well above confidence.

Do people who want to be confident and seek a mate who is confident because having confidence is the opposite of weakness and a confident person is low maintenance?

Do people think “I want to be able to get from point A to point B without any pesky emotions getting in the way” and do they want it to look effortless? I’ve found commitment, curiosity and desire can work as well.

As you can read, I have trouble understanding the concept of confidence. I’ve never thought “I can do anything I want!” or needed to think that before attempting things. I let desire and curiosity motivate me. Maybe that’s what people mean by confidence — desire and curiosity. I have no idea.

Thinking you need confidence seems like a hindrance and not helpful.

Twenge notes in the BBC article that since the 1960s and 1970s when more focus was put on high self-esteem and confidence, kids have grown up with higher expectations and as expectations grew so did the incidences of anxiety and depression.

It’s similar to how the rates of obesity increased the more our society focused on healthy eating, thinness, and dieting.

Should we forget about focusing on confidence? Yes. That’s the only question can answer with confidence.

MM

Please Change My Mind

I don’t need help with feeling. It kind of happens on its own.  And I like it that way. Even when I’m feeling awful, no one is feeling exactly as awful as I am in exactly the same way and for the same reasons as I am.

I am open to changing my mind, though. Nothing brings me more pleasure than having a closed mind, being sure, assuming I know, and being confronted with some new information. Or a new perspective. Or being flat-out wrong.

I love when I’m thinking thoughts, going around and around my mind, digging into a position and someone comes along with a new way of seeing, a perfect new atomic thought that blows my mind wide open. I love when someone smart, awake, and willing to share comes along and gets you closer to what’s true.

It’s easier and lazier to advise someone “Don’t feel                   “. This requires no further thinking.

It’s harder to see clearly in a world that wants us all to be blind, undisruptive, and meek. It’s harder to find new ways of operating.

It’s easier to say “Just be positive!”, “Just forgive!”, “Just be confident!”

Just. Just. Just. How? How? How?

Don’t tell me not to be judgmental. How do I see people clearly? Give me new eyes. Be my new eyes.

We need more Andrew W.K.s in the world, delivering the truth in a weekly column:

True confidence is a quiet and largely invisible state of inner conviction. You don’t need to outwardly prove your bravery to yourself or anyone else. When you’re genuinely confident, it’s a choice you perpetually make to be true to yourself, even when that truth is full of vulnerability and risk.

I’ll share that a hundred times. I don’t care.

We need more Ane Axfords offering new ways of thinking about sensitivity. She released a video titled “Meeting Your Needs” in which she walks us through discussing high sensitivity with the people in your life. The video is an hour and a half long but there are so many thought-provoking ideas in it that it’s worth listening to/watching:

Sensitivity is the mechanism through which you’re interacting and experiencing the world… the volume at which you experience life.

I will continue to share her ideas. I don’t care.

We need more Rebecca Solnits. Who would have thought you could think differently about the most human and most mundane of activities, walking? Well she did it. From her book Wanderlust:

Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals.

(…)

Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allows us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made busy by them. It leaves us free to think without being wholly lost in our thoughts.

Never thought about it that way, but true, right?

We need more thoughtful, curious people who have felt their way through life and can see and report what they see. Feelings will sort themselves out.

MM

The Best Thing I Read This Week Is …

… The advice Andrew W.K. gives to someone who has lost their confidence and wants it back. Andrew W.K.  basically tells this person and all of us HOW TO LIVE. Get ready for the Truth: 

There is no “old self” to get back to. There is only yourself now. There is no real way to “be who you were;” you can only to be who you are.
(….)

The longer you live, the more you’ll realize the impossibility of holding onto anything other than where you currently are. And even that moment is in motion. It’s all one, big, huge, solid moment — a moment called “your life.” Don’t go back and live in a moment that doesn’t exist any more when you have this precious moment right in front of you now. You’ve earned it. Be worthy of your own life.

His take on confidence is what I’ve been waiting to read:

As far as the concept of confidence goes, it seems that the idea of being confident is a largely misinterpreted, poorly-applied, extremely over-valued and distorted version of integrity. What is commonly described as confidence is the sort of artificially well-adjusted swagger we secretly wished we had, but generally loathe when we see it aggressively displayed by others. It’s an unnecessarily brazen boldness that seems to be trying a little too hard to compensate for some poorly concealed weakness. This type of impudence really isn’t confidence at all, but just a loud and futile attempt to drown out fear with pompous boasting rather than truly overcoming it and transforming doubts into actual strengths. What may first appear as certitude and ability, even to the person showcasing these traits, is really just a sort of disconnection masquerading as self-assurance.

Intentionally blinding ourselves to the inherent insecurity found in nearly all aspects of our daily existence does not count as confidence. Pushing those feelings of doubt, confusion, and instability out of one’s mind doesn’t count as belief in oneself. It’s more like an aggressive ignorance, an unwillingness to go through the humbling and painful process of true self-evaluation and growth.

True confidence is a quiet and largely invisible state of inner conviction. You don’t need to outwardly prove your bravery to yourself or anyone else. When you’re genuinely confident, it’s a choice you perpetually make to be true to yourself, even when that true is full of vulnerability and risk.

Brushing off one’s doubts may seem like an easy way to empower oneself, but truly having the confidence to face one’s weaker moments with brutal self-awareness and penetrating honesty is even better. This is certainly more challenging, but it’s infinitely more rewarding for our spirit and our surroundings to be delicate and thoughtful with our strength.

It’s really this type of quiet confidence that we’re striving for. And whether we like it or not, this type of confidence cannot always be developed or measured by things like buying houses, getting college degrees, or being popular with others.

Okay, I’m not going to copy the whole thing even though I want to. I tweeted that this should be taught in schools and it should.

Please click on the link and read all of his thoughtful, kind advice. I’m going to write more about it on Sunday. The topic:  please don’t tell me how to feel but help me see more clearly. Like Andrew W.K. has.

MM

Please Don’t Tell Me How To Feel

I love people. I love well-meaning people. I love when well-meaning people see what they think is a problem, they try to offer a solution. They care.

But, nothing makes me stop listening or reading or makes me want to punch someone in the face more than a well-meaning person who tells me how to feel. Or how not to feel.

Most of what I’ve written on this blog is a long-winded way of saying “Please don’t tell me how to feel”. Or “I’m gonna feel any way I want.”

When I’m bitter or resentful or jealous or wallowing in self-pity or feeling any of those emotional no-nos, I’m OK. No one is being hurt.

These well-meaning people think they’re saving you from your pain or discomfort. Maybe what’s happening is your feelings are causing them pain. Making them uncomfortable.

Nothing is happening when I’m feeling schadenfreude. I don’t need to be reminded that “empathy is better”. You know I’m able to feel schadenfreude and empathy? One feeling doesn’t negate the possibility of the other. The emotional world is big enough, sturdy enough, for both. Plus, schadenfreude is such a great word. If we eliminated experiencing sour grapes we wouldn’t have the word “schadenfreude”.

Please don’t tell me not to be judgmental. I don’t even know what people mean when they suggest I “don’t be judgmental”. I know it’s English, but it might as well be Mandarin. Judging is behavior that is coded in my DNA. Asking me to stop judging is like asking me to stop breathing.

Do you know there are gifts to being judgmental? Sadie Stein tweeted “I love being wrong about people. It’s the best thing about being judgmental.” I constantly judge and I’m occasionally wrong and there is so much pleasure in being wrong and surprised by people. There needs to be word for that: überraschtvergnügenfalsch. Maybe that will catch on.

Once emotions are voiced, once emotions become actions, there needs to be rules and boundaries about how we speak about what we feel and how we act those feelings out.

But, when the feelings are inside of me they’re mine. There’s power there. There’s magic there. The truth is there. Instead of suggesting someone “doesn’t feel”, what about some gentle curiosity? What about asking if it’s true? To me there is no place for morality in emotions, no superior or better feelings, just truer ones.

Because the world sometimes sucks, I started to feel hopeless the other day. I felt awful: knots in my stomach, a desire to inhale food, imagining a huge lever that when pulled would suck me out of the world into the void. But, I didn’t do anything about my despair. I didn’t eat. I reminded myself that despair is OK but it’s also arrogant and I’m not arrogant. It’s not true. I just felt it until another feeling came along. Feelings come. They go. No need for prescriptions or prohibition.

Whenever some well-meaning person suggests feeling/not feeling something, I think of what Toni Morrison said and she’s perfect so I’ll believe and do what she believes and does:

I want to feel what I feel. What’s mine. Even if it’s not happiness, whatever that means. Because you’re all you’ve got.

So stay out of it, well-meaning people. But thank you for caring.

MM

Things That Would Bring Me Pleasure

The ability to push a button and be surrounded by complete silence

The ability to decline or say no without actually saying the words

The opportunity to live in a house like this one:

  
    

Season 5 of this show finally streaming on Netflix:

MM

#NotAllHSPAreCrybabies

If you spend anytime online, specifically on social media sites like Twitter or Tumblr, you must have come across this phenomenon where women share stories of their experiences with sexism or stories of being attacked/abused/harassed by men and some dude comes along and insists “Not all men are like that!”

Writer Erin Gloria Ryan explains the Not All Men types in Jezebel:

Not All Men! has gone from an irritating trope to a funny, giddy skewering of point-missing folks whose knee jerk reaction as part of a privileged group is to defend themselves against implications that they, as members of the complained-about privileged group, might be complicit in the status quo. It’s defensive bullshit that doesn’t really do anything but prove the bearer of Not All Men is more concerned with saving face for themselves than, you know, actually acknowledging the concern that another person is expressing. In the Not All Men mind, it’s worse to be called sexist than to actually be a victim of sexism.

That is hilarious. But it’s a gross phenomenon. These Not All Men men want to stress that they’re special and different and whenever women use “men” to describe what men typically do (like yell at you while you’re walking down the street) that it means them specifically and personally. Get over yourself. It’s not about you!

Did I say it was gross?

But, I do understand the urge to want to point out that not every man is the same. When your identity is being besmirched or portrayed inaccurately or that portrayal doesn’t represent who you are, you want to defend it.

An article was published last week in the Wall Street Journal titled “Do You Cry Easily? You many Be a Highly Sensitive Person” with a photo of a crowd crying in a theater. I cringed and thought “Not me. Not all HSP.”

The article itself is well-written and provides most of the information someone unfamiliar with the trait would need to know.

Yet…

That title. That photo. Why?

The author used the story of a 44-year-old male engineer who cries easily to represent those with the trait. I know many engineers. They are not the wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve type. I have never seen a man I know cry. Ever. So why such an extreme example?

It bothers me that those who are learning about the trait for the first time after reading this article will think we’re all crybabies. Even the “crybaby” engineer, Michael Hassard, said “nobody likes a crybaby”.

Not me. Not all HSP.

I’m not saying men or engineers or anyone, highly sensitive or not, shouldn’t cry. I’m saying crying easily is not what being highly sensitive is about. It is a manifestation of something deeper and it seems The Wall Street Journal and other publications don’t want to or are unable to represent what high sensitivity truly is.

I suspect leading with the crying aspect of high sensitivity is deliberate. The easiest way to spot a sensitive person is to notice if they get emotional, tear up or cry openly and often. It’s easy, but not always the most reliable way to spot one. One of the easiest way to get clicks/shares is to use a charged issue like crying in the title, photo and meat of your article. The Wall Street Journal is mostly read by college educated, high earning males so of course they used a former NASA engineer who is easily moved to tears as the human element in the article.

Elke Van Hoof, a professor, researcher, and organizer of the first international congress on HSP put “in-depth processing of information” as central to the HSP trait, and called it “a cause of over-stimulation and heightened emotional response.” It’s a lot harder and a lot less provocative to lead with and describe “in-depth processing of information” in an article or photo, although I’m sure there are writers and artists who would be willing to try if motivated and directed to do so.

But, so what if I don’t cry easily? There are certainly HSP out there who do. As Scott Barry Kaufman wrote recently in Scientific American, there are shades of sensitivity. 

For some of us, our sensitivity mainly manifests physiologically. Some of us (me) are unaffected by violent movies and TV shows. Some of us bristle at the “sensitive” in highly sensitive and prefer “responsive”. And some of us cry easily.

Not every story a woman tells about her negative experience with men is about all men and not every article about HSP will reflect every sensitive person’s personal experience.

I’m glad the criers out there are getting the validation and understanding they need. Not everything is about me.

I’d really like to hear from the HSP out there: Do you cry easily or not? Do headlines like the one in The Wall Street Journal bother you?

MM

The Best Thing I Read This Week Is …

… From Vivian Gornick, author of the memoir The Odd Woman and the City, in an interview at Vice. In it, she tackles the “having it all” myth and tells us how to actually get there:

Every two minutes, there’s another prescription: Lean in, lean out, do this, do that, you can’t have it all, you must have it all—I don’t know what the hell it all means. You know, it’s an illusion, “have it all.” Now one of the reasons you can’t have it all is because there is, as yet, no achievement of those early goals. It’s generational work; it’s work of a thousand years.

That’s what you’re living through—you’re in the eye of the storm, and you will be as long as you live. I never hope to see much more than I see now in my life. The question of equality for men and women is so unbelievably fraught it brings to the surface anxieties that are absolutely existential in nature. Metaphysical. Really the heart of things. So people come up with prescriptions every two minutes. And that’s the journalistic need, to make news. Every five years the New York Times announces we’re post-feminism.

They’ll be the last to know.

They will be the last to know. That’s right. You’ll be the first, they’ll be the last.

You’re living in a world whose rules we helped reduce without replacing them. So everything’s up in the air, and you’re all on your own. But! There’s so much more room for you to struggle in an open field, to find your way. You’re freer than ever before to ask: What makes me feel exiled within myself? What doesn’t? What feels good? What doesn’t? What’s exhilarating, what’s depressing? That’s all that you have. And it is true that people on the left, for instance—all my life—have been looking on women’s rights as an instrument of capitalist manipulations. And I can’t see it that way anymore. What we want is not revolutionary. On the contrary, what we want is a more perfect democracy. We want what the democracy promised. An equal shot at being equally miserable. An equal shot at being just as unhappy as anybody else, but not because of race, or sex, or whatever.

So there’s an increased freedom. But once you go to exercise that freedom, you still haven’t set the terms of the world you live in.

Well, you may, eventually. It depends on which way a critical mass develops out of all this. First that has to happen. That’s why it’s incumbent upon each of you to become the best person you can be, as whole a human being as you can be. It’s the only thing you’ve really got, but you do have that. I believe firmly that that is how you change the world. And as old as I am, I take that as my responsibility. And I will take that until I die.

The Movie About High Sensitivity I’ve Been Waiting For

Remember when I wrote about Elaine Aron’s trailer for her documentary Sensitive: The Untold Story? No? Well, you can read about it here and here.

 I was underwhelmed. I wrote that it was banal and didn’t reflect the HSP aesthetic at all. Yes, I think there is a HSP aesthetic. But, I suspect it wasn’t made with that in mind which is fine. Disappointing but fine.

I imagined if I was going to make a movie about HSP I would hire the best artist I could find who maybe was also highly sensitive, give him/her cash and the only instruction I’d give the artist is “make a movie about HSP that best represents who you are as a sensitive person AND more importantly as an artist.” 

On Monday, I received a newsletter email from Ane Axford with a link to a book she described as a children’s book for adults called Numinous and Voluminous. The link lead to a video of Ane reading a story about being HSP or a “subtle giant” with watercolor paintings and a simple guitar musical score as an accompaniment. 

It’s not a movie but it has the aesthetic and artistry I was looking for in my hypothetical movie about HSP. It’s beautiful. It’s luminous. What was lacking in the Sensitive: The Untold Story trailer (the documentary may be better *fingers crossed*) is in Numinous and Voluminous: the creative, spiritual, and emotional aspect of the trait. It’s simple yet profound. Childlike yet filled with wisdom. It’s about more than the science and studies and the desperation for non-HSP to understand. 

The quotes that resonated the most for me:

The more (subtle giants) tried to do the things that they should the more things they broke.

The giants often hid lots of times on purpose and sometimes not on purpose.

Giants are experts in hiding because they can be in plain sight and totally missed.

Being so tall meant they could see so much all the time and they didn’t want to see it all all the time. They just wanted to be able to get through the day.

Twice in the story, we see these concentric circles. Something about those circles moved me. I recognize those circles. As I write in my journal, I’ll usually start doodling and those doodles are usually circles. If I had a spirit geometric shape, it would be the circle. The way I operate is circular. The way I feel is circular. 

 

Ane’s story isn’t my story, but I understood all of it. The way to understand ourselves and each other is through stories. 

Ane recently wrote a Facebook post in response to the many posts I had written about her and to her. You can read it here. It was written to me, but there is so much there that would be enlightening and helpful to anyone. 

I wrote a draft of a post in response to her beautiful letter and it felt inadequate so I didn’t post it. My response after reading her post was to exhale and say “Thank you”. I felt seen and understood. I felt lucky. It’s so rare to have someone you admire read your work, let alone respond to it and encourage you. I felt like her post validated the intention I set for my blog which was to share things that I thought had value and to inspire people to do the same. Women are magic. Ane is magic. 

She is so challenging, challenging us to think in new ways about high sensitivity. She’s ahead of the game and people who are ahead of the game are rarely seen as the geniuses they are. I can foresee someone louder, someone better at selling ideas over having them, using and recycling Ane’s ideas and point of view and it would be shameful. 

In conclusion, I love her. 

MM

This Interior Life

The interior life is a real life.  — James Baldwin

I was scrolling through my Tumblr posts recently and realized I posted two quotes that offered the same advice by two different writers.

The most recent quote was from the commencement address Mary Karr gave at Syracuse two weeks ago. In it she warned the graduates:

Don’t compare you twisted up insides to others’ blow dried outsides

In April, I posted an excerpt from an article written by Anne Lamott in which she shares all that she knows and part of what she knows is what Karr knows:

Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared, even the people who seem to have it more or less together. They are much more like you than you would believe. So try not to compare your insides to their outsides.

She also holds the controversial position that “chocolate with 70% cacao is not actually a food. It’s best use is as bait in snake traps.” I understand why she may feel that way but she’s wrong. But that’s neither here nor there.

I unknowingly shared this advice more than once because I need to be reminded of it often.

People who live inside of themselves, who feel at home with their thoughts, memories, and feelings, whose interior life is life are probably most likely to not only have twisted up insides but to compare those insides to others’ blow dried outsides.

Time spent on social media only makes it worse. Being “blow dried” is encouraged, liked, popular, NORMAL. I also present a blow dried version of myself online while knowing it’s not exactly a lie but it’s also not true. And, I know everyone’s doing the same thing, so why do I, do we, make unfair comparisons? We all know the game we’re all playing. Why do we forget? Maybe we forget so we can remember who we really are over and over again.

You know what the problem is? Lack of context. It’s so hard to remember everyone (including me) is showing only the smallest sliver of who they are online or off. It’s hard to remember, without seeming cynical, that even that sliver is highly polished/idealized. It’s hard to remember while endlessly scrolling that perfect selfie is probably one of 200 taken. That cleverly worded tweet probably wasn’t as spontaneous as it appears. That well written article had many drafts and was heavily edited.

Everyone is like Joan Crawford, doing the 2015 social media equivalent of posing for family pictures with fake, tight smiles for some Hollywood magazine while behind the scenes screaming at our daughter about wire hangers.* No one shares their wire hanger stories.

I can’t suggest a way for us to either be ourselves all the time or to learn to stop comparing who we really are with everyone’s mask. All I’ve learned to do is hate myself less each time I do.

All any of us can do is remind one another. This post is that reminder.

MM

*Watch Mommie Dearest. It’s bizarre fun.

Pro-Complaining and Anti-Chill

This week I watched part of an episode of the The Daily Show in which former NBC new anchor Tom Brokaw was interviewed. I didn’t know Brokaw had been sick but he had multiple myeloma or cancer in the bone marrow in his back. Jon Stewart pointed out how amazed he was that Brokaw was in pain but never let anyone know about it. He never complained. This was admirable to Stewart. It isn’t to me.

I would want to hear about someone’s back pain caused by cancer. That is pain that needs to be voiced. I want to hear about pain caused by a headache. Jon Stewart joked that he tells people about having gas and I would want to hear about it! I want to hear about how everyone experiences the world around and inside of them even if it irritates, annoys or grosses me out.

Because that’s all that we are.

I think most people confuse whining with complaining. Here’s an explanation of the distinction from Psychology Today:

Complaining and whining can be distinguished by the nature of the dissatisfaction and by our motivation for expressing it. Complaining involves voicing fair and legitimate dissatisfactions with the goal of attaining a resolution or remedy. When we voice legitimate dissatisfactions but do so without the goal of attaining a resolution we are merely venting. And when the dissatisfactions we voice are trivial or inconsequential and not worthy of special attention, we are whining.

I’m actually pro complaining, venting and whining when done properly. I’m for describing how you’re experiencing the world around and inside of you whether there’s a goal of attaining a solution or not. To me it means you’re awake, alive and aware.

I complain and vent a lot because it makes me feel better. I’m aware of something and it sucks and I acknowledge it. But, I’m smart about it. I consider the audience and when it isn’t appropriate, I complain to myself.

The bad name given to complaining is just another thing I get/don’t get.

Here’s my theory: those who don’t complain, the stoic, stiff-upper-lip types are so unaware of how they feel or are so unskilled in acknowledging anything irrational that it feels wrong somehow. To these types, acknowledging pain is to complain or whine about pain. But it ain’t.

This dog is so “chill”. By KC Green

What is complaining to the Tom Brokaws of the world is being superaware of what is happening to me. Recently I said out loud for no one and everyone to hear: “Why is there suddenly so much horn honking?”. What I’m really saying is “Something is changing/wrong/out of sorts on the streets of the city I live in”. When I say “my knees hurt” to no one and everyone I’m saying “I’m in my body. I’m paying attention. There is a potential problem here. Take it easy, Mel.”

Something I think is directly related to the frowning upon complaining is this noxious idea of “chill”. For those of you who don’t know what “chill” is (it deserves quotation marks forever), here’s a definition from Alana Massey from her great article, “Against Chill”:

To the uninitiated, having Chill and being cool are synonyms. They describe a person with a laid-back attitude, an absence of neurosis, and reasonably interesting tastes and passions. But the person with Chill is crucially missing these last ingredients because they are too far removed from anything that looks like intensity to have passions. They have discernible tastes and beliefs but they are unlikely to materialize as passionate. Passion is polarizing; being enthusiastic or worked up is downright obsessive.

Massey lays out the history of the word “chill” and notes “these definitions are deceptively simple ways of asking people to have fewer strong emotions”

It seems like the attitudes, behaviors and stances our culture approves of are narrowing and extreme and contradictory. “We” admire the chillest amongst us, the ones who let things roll of their backs and never appear overly emotional or affected. But in the areas “we” have agreed emotion is mandatory, “we” endorse emotion that is overly sweet, overly sentimental and nauseating. When feeling is allowed, it’s cartoonish.

I like to complain and I have no “chill” and I like these tendencies in others. With awareness and an inability to be quiet about what I’m feeling comes a tolerance of the sometimes messy emotions and intensity of other people. It makes me feel closer to people. From Oliver Burkeman’s article “Keep Complaining! It’s Good For You!”:

To exchange dissatisfactions is to acknowledge another person’s existence, and to share rueful mutual sympathy at the sometimes tremendously irritating predicament of having been born.

“Stop complaining!” “Be Chill” — behind these ideas, I suspect, is the growing and gross positivity movement that is the new opiate of the masses.

When I (never) become Queen of the World, complainers will be free to complain without ever experiencing an eye roll or an unsolicited solution or explanation. The strong, silent types will be banished to an island with the “chill” people where they will be forced to wear shirts with itchy tags in them, everyone is forced to make only the most superficial small talk, no one cares about anything, and everyone dies of boredom.

MM