Nonfiction – Half-Blood Kuwaiti

You’re Not Spiritual, You’re Just an Asshole

Ten years ago, if I had met someone who told me they were on a spiritual journey, I would have been enthralled. Now, I’m more likely to run the other way. It’s not that I hate spirituality. I think it’s amazing. I even follow @theholisticpsychologist, although sometimes I wish I didn’t. It’s just that when I think of a spiritual person, I think of someone humble, deep, and capable of experiencing life on a whole different level. What I usually get is someone who hates their father and is too busy finding themselves to commit to lunch plans.

It just seems like spirituality has become a trend, and while a helpful philosophy becoming popular should be a good thing, that tends to not be what happens. Whenever something becomes mainstream, it automatically loses a lot of its nuance. It has to in order to be accessible to average people who haven’t looked at the subject in depth and probably aren’t interested in making radical changes to their lives. Susan who practices five minutes of daily mindfulness wants to reduce her anxiety, not find the source of all human suffering.

It’s not bad to simplify concepts to help a normal person live a better life. But we have to be careful. While we acknowledge that religion can easily be misused or misapplied, spirituality isn’t regarded with the same suspicion (despite spawning its own fair share of sexual predators).

One of the first problems with the current discourse around self-help and spirituality is that the same messages are being sent to very different people, who may not have enough self-awareness to determine what applies to them and what doesn’t. There is a lot of focus on being yourself, saying no, and not being responsible for other people’s feelings. That’s exactly what some people need to hear. However, it’s not as many people as you might think, despite the vast number who will tell you their toxic trait is “being too nice.” After all, the problems in our lives tend not to be caused by having too many unselfish people around us. Many people would benefit from being less self-centered—being encouraged to help others and think less about their own desires. When only the first message is circulated, everyone picks it up, and what happens is much like when a narcissist or psychopath sees a therapist. They don’t change, they just learn how to dress up their self-centered behavior in fancy words that make it harder for others to argue with. Disagree with someone like this and expect it to be labeled gaslighting, shutting down all further discussion because a difference of opinion is now a psychological manipulation tactic. Expect a certain standard of behavior from them, and you will be treated like you’re codependent, trying to change them, or too attached to whatever aspect of the conventional world best dismisses your point. To the toxic woke person, the only emotionally healthy people are those who don’t ask anything of them.

The second big problem is that the spiritual quest is often seen as seeking your authentic self, but what gets left out is that the authentic self in a spiritual sense is the part of you that is closest to God or a higher power. It’s not your personality or anything we mean by the self in the usual context. Monks and nuns sometimes practice cultivating an inner and outer silence in order to more clearly hear the voice of God in their heads. You probably know the voice they’re referring to even if you wouldn’t describe it as God. Essentially, the personality needs to be subdued for the higher self to emerge. This means abandoning your ego and surrendering to something greater than yourself. When this distinction about the meaning of the true self is lost and you remove the connection to some type of higher power, even if it’s just the universe, the result is a radical change in purpose. The end goal becomes you and figuring out what you want. But the destination at the end of the journey should not be you. It should be letting go of you.

This isn’t because it makes you a better person or more pleasant to be around, although it does both of those things. It’s because this is how spirituality will make you happier in the end. The person who goes for a walk in the woods or sits by the ocean and feels lighter and freer feels that way because they’ve been reminded of how unimportant their own worries are compared to the vastness of the universe. They feel small and insignificant, but not in a bad way, because they are also a part of the world that has just left them wonderstruck. This person has just let go of a bit of their ego and felt connected to something more important.

These are the things that bring a person peace–connection to something more, seeing our problems with perspective, feeling that we bring something of value to the world, loving and being loved, and being in control of ourselves. None of these things are easy, but any path towards fulfillment that doesn’t include them is going to be incomplete.

For some reason, spirituality has a reputation for being Religion Lite—all the fuzzy feelings associated with it without the annoying parts. No rules, only vibes. In reality, spirituality is the purpose behind the rules of religion. In his book The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley discusses the concepts all religions have in common, and it’s not things like having one god or respecting your parents. It’s that rules and spiritual practices like praying and fasting are designed with the goal of diminishing your ego so that you submit to the will of God. All religions are meant to achieve this. People would rather argue about what the rules are or whose rules are better than look at the big picture, which is that the rules are there to teach you discipline. This matters more than the rules themselves.

I don’t say this to glorify religion. I just say it to illustrate that the idea of the spiritual path being easier than the religious one is based on a misunderstanding. Spirituality is the ultimate goal of religion and choosing it means taking responsibility for your own development instead engaging in rituals mindlessly. This is actually harder than just being religious. The spiritual person prays because they know it’s good for them. The religious person prays because they think God will punish them. For most people, threats are much more effective.

Spirituality that brings you only to yourself and your desires isn’t real. Any philosophy that results in you focusing on your own feelings all the time isn’t going to make you a better person. It can be necessary somewhere along your path to go through a period of self-absorption, but the purpose of understanding your trauma and emotions isn’t so that you can indulge them—it’s so that you overcome them. The next step should be moving forward.

If that next step isn’t reached, if the goal is focusing on the self for its own sake, you will get the problems we see around us. People will break commitments because being authentic to their (passing) feelings takes precedence. They will mis-interpret self-acceptance as an excuse to never grow, and a reason why no one should ever criticize them. Boundaries will be set from a place of avoidance instead of courage. You might have met examples of this in real life, perhaps in friends who think they should never be uncomfortable, or men who tell you how unenlightened you are when you ask them to stop sleeping with other people.

This type of spirituality involves avoiding discomfort rather than facing it, except perhaps the discomfort in cutting off relatives who vote Republican. I think we should bring back the type of spirituality people have to suffer for. What happened to meditating forty days under a tree, giving up your worldly possessions, or taking a vow of silence? Some monks clean as a form of meditation. In certain convents nuns are not allowed to look at themselves in the mirror to discourage vanity. Most people now would say, “There’s no real point to doing these things,” not understanding that the whole point is that it’s difficult. Doing hard things changes you, or at least teaches you something. I don’t believe you need to go to these lengths to develop a beneficial level of spirituality in your life, but if I’m going to be taking advice from someone, I’d rather take it from the person who spent a year challenging themselves than the person who spent a year doing whatever they wanted.

Human beings are better off when they don’t make themselves their own gods, usually because they aren’t very good at it. Much like children, we are happier with limits than when we follow our every whim. Relying on a consistent set of principles frees you from the burden of constantly evaluating your inner state to determine what to do next. And understanding how little we can control, even about our own futures, puts us in the frame of mind to accept what happens with grace. Religious people are often happier because they have given up the burden of believing they are the ultimate authority on their lives. Whatever is planned for them may be what’s best, even if it isn’t what they thought they wanted.

In the end, the easy way out is never real. Selfish people will always find a way to continue being selfish if they want to, so perhaps blaming it on poorly explained spirituality isn’t going to change them. But maybe looking at a more nuanced perspective will help the people who encounter them. Don’t be impressed or guilted when someone hits you with words that could have been picked up from the explore page of Instagram. Instead look at their actions. Is their life a good example of strong values? Has their brand of spirituality changed them for the better? Perhaps more importantly, has it affected the people around them positively? If not, smile, nod, and run the other way. The wolf who admits he is a wolf can be dealt with. The wolf who believes himself to be a sheep is impossible.

3 Ways We Refuse To Take Responsibility For Our Lives

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Razvan Chisu on Unsplash

It is interesting to me how much power and agency the average middle-class person has and how often they refuse to use it. Power is a strange thing. Most people do not feel powerful. But I believe we choose not to recognize our own agency and abilities because then we would be responsible for using them, and that responsibility is a very frightening thing.

It is more comfortable to blame others for our unhappiness than to acknowledge that we are where we are largely through our own actions. I read something once along the lines of, “We all have what we want most.” That might seem contrary to your experience, but it’s not wrong. Many people would rather be safe than happy. They might say they want to be rich, but what they want is to continue spending money. They might say they want to meet someone and fall in love, but they would rather not risk rejection.

I have three favorite ways of avoiding responsibility in my own life, but I am sure there are many others. I’m sure I do many more that I haven’t realized yet. But I think if I can work on these, I will be a lot closer to where I want to be.

1. Caring more about being right than reaching goals.

This is a big one in every aspect of our lives. Instead of telling people how we want to be treated, we test them and judge them if they get it wrong. If we really want other people to make us happy, we should give them all the information they need to do that. And we should understand that to increase the chances of successfully getting what we want from them, we should not approach the subject as though we are a victim and they have wronged us. It might be true, but that doesn’t mean it will work.

In other areas, this could manifest as refusing to compromise your artistic vision to be successful (which is fine, but expect to be less successful), refusing to ask for opportunities or promotions because other people should realize you deserve them, or insisting on any course of action after it has been shown to not produce the results you want. On some level, people know what to do to get what they want. They just don’t believe they should have to do it.

2. Believing choices that would cause conflict are not options.

How often do we say, “I can’t do x, y, or x,” but we really mean that it would be uncomfortable or cause a conflict with someone else? This sounds like, “I can’t marry the person I want because my family wouldn’t approve,” or, “My husband won’t let me have male friends.” It’s nice that you don’t want to upset people, but you are making a choice. People do not have nearly as much control over you as they would like you to think.

It is not wrong to upset other people or say no. It’s unpleasant, but if you can learn to live with that feeling, you will finally be free.

You might say that you can’t stand up for yourself. But this probably doesn’t mean you can’t, it means that perhaps it makes you very anxious or you start crying. But you can still speak your mind even if you are crying. You do not have to do something perfectly for it to be effective.

Part of the reason why we are reluctant to risk conflict is we don’t have good conflict resolution skills. I personally have spent more of my life focusing on conflict avoidance skills. These boil down to trying to be polite, apologizing quickly, and giving in. To many people, it is a terrifying thing to honor your own wishes knowing that it will upset someone you love. Beneath that is the unspoken belief that they will no longer love you if you have caused them anger. We believe we do not have enough to offer to still be worth it after we have upset them. Which is strange, because the people who usually feel this way are upset by others all the time and still care about them.

The ironic thing is that we would not struggle so much with conflict if we weren’t expecting someone else to fulfill the needs we refuse to meet ourselves. The confrontation becomes weighted and intense because so much relies on the other person responding how we desire. On the flip side, every person who takes responsibility for their own happiness makes it easier for everyone around them to do the same. If I meet my own needs, I will not be upset by what you need to do to meet yours. If I know my boundaries, I will not be torn when you ask me to violate them. I will simply say no, calmly and politely, because what really affects us is feeling powerless. I will be upset by attempts to manipulate me if I fear that they might work. I will be upset by insults if I secretly agree with them. If I know who I am and that I deserve to be happy, I will have no desire to control someone else. (Or at least a significantly decreased desire. No one’s perfect.)

3. Externalizing insecurities and hoping others will fix them.

I have not thought about this one as much as the others, but I think it is still valid. I have noticed that people tend to gravitate towards those who see them the way they see themselves. That’s not inherently negative because hopefully the way you see yourself is not inherently negative. But let’s be realistic. It frequently is.

Instead of facing our self-doubt, we look for someone who doubts us as well and try to win their approval. If we can convince them, maybe this is proof that we should believe it ourselves. And this process only works with people who see the flaws we are self-conscious about.

I see this happen a lot in romantic relationships. People chase those who don’t like them because they don’t like themselves. It’s not very reassuring to prove yourself to someone who already likes you. This person just seems to have low standards to us. No, we want someone perhaps even harsher than ourselves. And this is why we stay with people who are critical and put us down. We think, “If I can get this person who hates x, y, or z about me to think I’m great, imagine how wonderful I must seem to all the people who already thought I was fine.” Perfectionism, the root of a lot of self-esteem issues, wants us to reach a state where we are immune to criticism or disapproval. So no wonder we would be more interested in the people who don’t value us. We really think they can’t exist for us to be okay.

If you value yourself, the whole conflict disappears. When you really, really value yourself, you realize how powerful and capable you are. And you force yourself to act on it even if it might be difficult at first. Growth is not supposed to be comfortable. Think of how much babies cry when they get teeth. But it’s all worth it in the end, because they finally get to eat real food.

Everyone Is Not Beautiful

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I usually hear this sentiment applied to women, as in, “Every woman is beautiful.” And my first thought is:

Is it so terrible to not be beautiful that we cannot admit any woman isn’t?

I don’t believe that denying reality helps. It just makes it seem that whatever we are denying must be really terrible if we can’t acknowledge it. People are aware that an attractiveness hierarchy exists, and this kind of rainbows and sunshine attitude doesn’t get rid of the hierarchy; it reaffirms it and insists we are all on the top of it. I just think of Animal Farm. All women are beautiful, but some women are more beautiful than others. Great. Now we are back where we started.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t believe in our own attractiveness. I think everyone is beautiful to someone. I think everyone has beautiful features, both internally and externally. But why is it considered a necessary part of a woman’s self-esteem for her to believe she is beautiful? Wouldn’t it be better to encourage women to believe their worth is not based on how pretty they are? What I hear behind these superficial empowerment messages is: Your value is still based on your attractiveness. That hasn’t changed. But don’t worry, because you’re attractive.

The ironic thing is that I don’t see these people arguing that Trump supporters are beautiful, or misogynists, or Karens. Everyone is beautiful—if they subscribe to a narrow ideology of leftist beliefs. But it doesn’t work that way. People aren’t physically attractive based on whether or not you think they deserve to be. What ought to be is not what is reflected in the world. And if you think what’s on the inside makes someone beautiful (a very nice belief), everyone is still definitely not beautiful.

People don’t talk like this about men. Many men do not consider themselves particularly good-looking, and they don’t care about it one way or another. They believe in other positive qualities that they have. They don’t think the majority of their value depends on their outward appearance. When a man accomplishes something great, we don’t throw in how handsome and sexy he is the way we make sure to throw in “beautiful” when we are proud of a woman.

We wouldn’t say everyone has an above average IQ because that’s statistically illogical, but we would acknowledge that everyone has a talent of some kind. The first statement is incorrect, the second is the truth. The truth is comforting. The truth is that you can be personally attractive without being conventionally beautiful. And if you aren’t particularly attractive, that’s fine too. A pretty face contributes so much less to the world than intelligence, hard work, and good character. It’s a lie to pretend that being valuable attracts as much attention as superficial beauty. But the world doesn’t reward what is should.

We are still obsessed with women’s bodies, and whether we insist on covering them, uncovering them, perfecting them, or going on about how perfect all of them intrinsically are, we are still placing more importance on the body than the woman herself. It is not empowering women to expand the definition of who deserves to be sexualized. Why is it so necessary to tell us every body is a bikini body? I’m not saying don’t wear bikinis, but where is the movement shaming men for not being comfortable in speedos?

It does end up being shaming. You are shamed for not loving your body more. But I think if I really love myself, I should tie it to something more meaningful than my body. I should be able to acknowledge I have features that are not ideal, but not be upset about this because who I am is so much more than that. Men, for the most part, are pretty covered up in everyday life. This isn’t because there is some kind of stigma against their bodies. It’s just that their bodies are not their defining characteristic and so no one cares much about what they wear. People are always telling women to either cover or uncover, but neither of those solves the actual problem, which is that women are defined by their physical appearances.

I am reminded of the words of Courtney Martin: “We are the daughters of the feminists who said, ‘You can be anything,’ and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’” But it’s lie. You don’t have to be everything. You don’t have to be beautiful, you don’t have to balance a family and a career, you don’t have to love every part of yourself. You just have to be good enough.

How to Use Your Pain to Get Ahead

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Life is a traumatic event and everything we do is a coping mechanism. Some coping mechanisms are just more socially acceptable than others.

Some of our greatest triumphs are the result of attempting to escape our suffering. And because that suffering doesn’t go anywhere, we have an endless source of motivation, spurring us on to greater and greater heights. Does it make sense to run from pain when you’ll never escape it? No, not really, but logic doesn’t hold most people back, so don’t let it stop you either.

Society looks down on people who feel like they have a void inside, as if this is due to a lack of personal development. But the natural response to a void is to create or find something to fill it. This, in essence, is productivity. They say necessity is the mother of invention, but maybe it’s deep personal pain. Maybe they’re the same thing.

Before I continue, I would like to say there is a level of pain where you can’t get out of bed, and a slightly lower level of pain, where you get out of bed but spend all day trying to prove your worth. Psychiatrists exist for the first. Paychecks exist because of the second. This article is about aiming for the second, not the first.

Suffering and insecurity are responsible for many of the positive elements in our lives, or even physical things we enjoy. Would obnoxious sports cars exist if poorly-endowed men didn’t? Would Marilyn Monroe’s movie career have happened if her father had loved her? (Daddy issues are responsible for many things on the internet but I’m not going to get into that here.) I for one become funnier when I am tired or unhappy because stress lowers my concern for my dignity.

I believe our innate brokenness is responsible for most of our social relationships. If people were as emotionally self-sufficient as self-love twitter tells us we should be, they wouldn’t connect with others very much. But to triumph over loneliness while remaining alone is not really an admirable goal. If we did not experience pain in being alone, we would have no motivation to tolerate the pain inherent in existing with other people. A problematic level of suffering makes us accept abuse and toxicity just because it’s better than being alone, but a nice, reasonable level of pain pushes us to do scary things like leave the house and speak to other people. I certainly wouldn’t do it if the alternative wasn’t so much worse.

Pain not only gives you friends, it makes you work harder. The only reason I’m writing this blog post at all is because I asked a friend to publicly shame me if I did not publish a post every Thursday. I’m not motivated enough by the desire to improve myself, get somewhere in life, or be successful. I don’t have a clear vision of my future or a lot of self-discipline. But what I do have is an endless reservoir of shame, and it’s time I got something out of it besides insomnia. I doubt I would even have a blog if I genuinely loved myself.

If you are anxious or an overthinker, you are the perfect candidate for this method. My current strategy to avoid having thoughts is to crochet constantly. This has the added benefit of impressing friends and family, a great band-aid on the lack of social acceptance I experienced as a child. The only drawback is severe eyestrain and a return to the migraine medication I haven’t needed since I stopped teaching high school. But everything has a plus side, and painkillers are definitely, definitely not an exception.

How exactly you make your pain work for you depends greatly on your individual methods of suffering. Consider getting therapy to unearth the root causes of your issues so that you can exploit them more adeptly. As a general rule, though, failure of any kind is a push forward because you have less to lose. What you fear has already happened. There’s no way but up. If you continue to fail, at least that’s not as scary as change! Phoebe Buffay covered this topic better than I ever could in this commencement speech.

A few people have asked me what the point is of some of these “self-help” articles I write. After I wrote “Life Hacks For The Emotionally Stunted,” someone remarked, “I don’t feel like I’m supposed to follow this advice.” My purpose is not, actually, to tell anyone how to live correctly. It’s just to make you look at things from a different perspective. Maybe life is not as bad as you think. Maybe it’s actually much worse. You decide.

In Defense of Binge-Watching Television

black flat screen tv turned on displaying 11

Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash

Ever since childhood, I’ve had a wide variety of interests. Skimming through the books in my old room takes me back to some of the phases I went through: Origami Magic, HTML in a Week, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ballroom Dancing, Ballet for Dummies. On an unrelated note, I may have also had low self-esteem.

Most of these interests did not go anywhere. I revisited Origami Magic recently, thinking it might be easier for me now than it was in first grade, only to find I had actually regressed. I still haven’t learned to spin wool even though I bought a spindle in 2016, and as you might have guessed, very few people learn how to dance from books. My career as a pianist lost steam around the time I saw a four-year-old Chinese boy play the hardest song I knew better than me. I thought recently about what I had actually stuck with long-term, and a common theme emerged. I have become really good at hobbies that can be done while watching TV.

The TV, our most devoted quarantine friend, has been the subject of considerable criticism. It’s been accused of wasting our time, ruining our morals, and turning our children into idiots. I once had a parent claim it was why her son hit me and chased me with a pair of scissors. “Too much television,” she sighed. (I had a slightly different theory.)

Maybe we are just looking at it too negatively. The TV is a valuable tool–if we just understand how to use it properly. It actually benefits us in many ways.

It immobilizes people, for one thing. Especially children. Anything that keeps a child still, in one place, without warranting a call to Child Services, can’t be all bad. But even adults benefit from sitting. I Love Lucy was so popular in the 1950s that the crime rate in New York went down when it was on the air. Mobile adults go to war, take advantage of the working class, and accidentally impregnate each other. If more time were spent Netflixing than chilling, the world would be a considerably less sinful place. Studies show that couples with TVs in their bedrooms get less action. And less action is exactly what God wants you to have.

On a serious note, you actually will amp up your productivity if you can combine repetitive activities with television. If you want to learn something new, consider knitting or crocheting just because of how TV-friendly they are. Know thyself, and therefore aim low. Use TV to motivate you to exercise, attempt a tedious recipe (like stuffed grape leaves), or do housework. Get creative with finding ways to do your usual activities from the sofa. Watching TV from exciting new positions is a great way to start doing yoga. Is your favorite show just as good upside down? Let’s find out!

It may be sad that we find it so difficult to focus on one thing at a time these days, but does feeling bad about that somehow improve your attention span? No. So accept it and use it to your advantage. Sometimes the way to accomplish more is to numb out your brain.

TV quiets your mind, or kills it, as my mother would say. But that’s not all bad. There is an old joke that says the only reason you believe your brain is the most important organ in your body is because your brain is telling you that. The truth is, your brain is overrated. Even my brain is overrated. How many problems do we create for ourselves by worrying, ruminating, or coming up with excuses? All of these things are functions of the brain. Sometimes the answer is to think less.

Television gives you that. It gives you temporary reprieve from the agonies of your mind. And it isn’t simply a distraction, a way to deny reality until you finally turn it off. Stories help us cope with the hardships in our lives, no matter what form they come in. They give our struggles meaning and teach us to believe in happy endings. When times are really bad, we need the most easily accessible types of stories to comfort us. You might not feel like reading Dickens or Tolstoy when you get divorced or find out your parents never wanted you to be born. But you will turn on the TV.

Most sitcoms deal with topics that are very serious, but we laugh about them. This is their magic. If the characters we love can laugh through a tragedy, it tells us that maybe we can too.

At the end of the day, I even believe TV can motivate people to succeed. At some point, after spending hours watching other people do stuff, you’re going to want to do something of your own. Project Runway makes me sew more, cooking shows make me cook and consequently eat more, which is precisely why I don’t watch them. You will want to do what you see. One of the reasons we watch TV is because it is aspirational. It shows us who we could be, in another life with good lighting and makeup men. If you are confused about who you are, look at what you like to watch. Look at the characters you love. What speaks to you and makes you keep watching long after your backside gets sore and your eyes burn? Don’t, however, take it too literally. Liking Breaking Bad does not mean your destiny lies in drugs. But it could mean you desire more adventure in your life. I’ve always gravitated towards heartwarming comedies because adventure and action are exactly what I don’t want. I want security and positive relationships. And, after I watch The X Factor, to be wildly famous.

In a nutshell, how can you discover your life purpose, finally start working out, and conquer the intrusive thoughts in your head about how you’re a stain on the reputation of your family? It’s easier than you think. Just watch more television.

Life Hacks for the Emotionally Stunted

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Work smart, not hard. This is what I tell myself as I do not work at all. The Age of Corona is upon us, and this means isolation, loneliness, and the absence of all routine except that which we impose upon ourselves. For most of us, that’s not good.

“I finally have the time to chase my dreams,” you might have said when it all started. Little did you know your deepest desire is not actually to succeed in life, but to have a really satisfying excuse for why you didn’t. Corona ravages our bodies, but free time ravages our veneers. I listen to my neighbor’s marriage disintegrate through the walls. I listen to my mother tell me that at least she cleaned the bathroom sink today. I listen to my cute friend ask me if she really resembles a turkey or if she just needs to stop looking in the mirror. We are all falling apart.

Deep down, nobody is really that evolved. The problem with most self-help is that it forgets that. It aims too high. I never have that problem. So here are some tips I have developed to help you cope with the emergence of your lower self.

Is that housework really necessary?

Did you know that housework, traditionally women’s work, was designed to be time-consuming and inefficient to keep your wife at home and away from other men who might impregnate her? (Source Unavailable.) Don’t fall for this. Fight the patriarchy. We inherit chores like traditions, not realizing there is a better way.

Take changing bedsheets, for example. Fitted sheets are difficult to change, and no one knows how to fold them. These two problems can be killed with one stone. To begin, collect all of your fitted sheets. Place them on your mattress, each one over the other. It is more work at one time, but it has bought you months of relaxation. Whenever you need clean sheets, remove one. The same method can be applied to pillowcases. To prepare your bed for 6-12 months of clean sheets, buy them in varying sizes since the outermost layers will need to be larger. This may also trick the cashier into thinking you have a spouse and children. Congratulations!

Pro Level: Buy a top-loading washing machine. Change your sheets without leaving your bed and toss them into the washer. Because of its resemblance to basketball, this counts as a workout.

Pit your demons against each other.

You will never be perfect. So why bother trying, or, more accurately, considering it without putting forth any effort? The outcome is more important than your intentions, and a better outcome is often achieved not by erasing flaws but by developing new ones. For example, are you fighting to keep your weight under control in quarantine? Don’t develop discipline! Instead, become too lazy to feed yourself. Create difficulties to decrease your motivation to eat fattening food. Buy fresh ingredients that require cooking, so you can watch them mold while you lose weight. Change your debit card number and place your wallet too far from the sofa for ordering food to be worth the journey. Sleep so much that you are only awake during curfew, when government forces can be relied on to keep you away from takeout. Worst case scenario, block your refrigerator door with dumbbells. If you give in to temptation, at least you will have done some strength-training.

This concept has a myriad of other applications. For example, are you a jealous, vindictive person? Do you struggle to wish others well and/or take great delight in revenge? Don’t waste time fighting these impulses. Instead, try to become too much of a coward to act on any of your desires, good or bad. Alternatively, work on being too dumb and incompetent to inflict any real harm even when you try your best.

Pro Level: Determine which deadly sins you possess and how they might interact with each other. Place bets on which ones will win each day. Try to involve younger siblings and siphon away their allowances.

Alleviate stress created by working from home.

Attempting to work from home can create all sorts of issues. Not only does it become harder to do your job, the increased scrutiny placed on you to prove you deserve to earn a salary in these conditions can be nerve-wracking. Probably you never did much under normal circumstances. How can you pretend to work when no one is around to watch?

Relax. Working from home is really just crying in your own bathroom. Stop focusing on your employer and utilize your talent for pretending to be busy with your family instead. To balance out the excess of bonding going on because of quarantine, claim you have Zoom meetings during mealtimes or “game nights.” Rebrand your bedroom as your office. Refuse to let anyone in without an appointment. This is your chance to become the important executive your parents always hoped you would be.

Pro Level: Hire an attractive secretary for your new “office.” Because some people have lost their jobs due to the pandemic, convince yourself this is charity, not exploitation.

Embrace unexpected skills.

Were you going to write a book during quarantine? Learn to play an instrument? Don’t worry that this didn’t pan out. Instead be encouraged by this truth: You don’t resist all work. You resist important, meaningful work.

The next time you find yourself being unmotivated and unproductive, realize that the problem is not you (maybe). The problem is your goals. Consider trying one of the following instead:

Bake brownies. In mugs. In the microwave.
Plan your wedding in detail to someone you’ve never met.
Brush up on your karaoke skills. You may find yourself more inclined to do this in the middle of the night. Follow your muse.
Research what really tore apart Brangelina.
KonMari your underwear drawer. Do your boxers spark joy? This is a great exercise for getting in touch with your feelings.

Pro Level: Acceptance of ruined plans and shattered hopes is very zen. If you complete this step with enthusiasm, you are likely to become a spiritual person. This is also a good excuse if depression has driven you to stop washing your hair.

Happy Quarantine.

Happy New Year, Losers

fireworks with lighting

JANUPRASAD on Unsplash

2019 was one of the best years of my life. It may only qualify for that distinction due to lack of competition from the other years, but it is still true. And I’m proud of myself for genuinely feeling that it was a good year even though I gained a considerable amount of weight, something that would once have bothered me to no end. But the path to plumpness was paved with such good food that I cannot fully regret it, so I tell myself that of course I gained weight, because 2019 was the year I Gave Birth To Myself.

By that I mean that it was an exciting, transformative year and in no way intend to diminish my mother’s contribution to my actual birth.

I have already lost some of the weight because I start thinking about the next year in November and actually start on my resolutions then. So my sister felt freer to tell me her impression of me at my heaviest after it had passed. “You even gained weight on your lips,” she whispered with alarm. I don’t think this is true, but someone did give me an odd look and say, “Why do you look like you just made out with a vacuum cleaner?” and I guarantee the reason was not that I had just made out with a vacuum cleaner.

New Year’s Resolution #1: Never reach a point in this year or any other so low that I develop a romantic interest in household appliances. Do not make eyes at the pink mechanical sweeper I bought just because it was pretty.

2019 was illuminating because I lost several people, both literally and in the sense that I lost what I wanted them to mean to me. It’s a good way to learn about yourself. That’s not a recommendation you have to take, though, because life will probably force it down your throat regardless of what you do.

It hurts but I find a certain satisfaction in it, because once it happens a few times, you realize that you actually will be okay. That it can happen again, and it will be fine then too. I let people ruin my opinion of them now when once I thought that was a terrible tragedy. I mean why should I avoid the pain when my ability to allow joy into my life can never exceed my willingness to allow in sadness?

Pain is an incredible motivator. The worse you feel, the more unbearable your situation becomes, forcing you to change. This is what I call Realistic Optimism. Now when I meet new people, I don’t think, “What’s going to end up being the matter with you?” because that would be negative. Instead I say, “What delightful new hobby will I take up to cope with the grief and despair you have in store for me? Could you be the one who pushes me to spin wool like I’ve been planning for the past four years?”

New Year’s Resolution #2: Find someone who fills me with a heartache so agonizing that it can only be expressed through song, as I would love to get back to playing the piano.

My main hope for 2020 is to be surprised (in a good way), which is not something you can plan for yourself without ruining the surprise, so I don’t have a long list of resolutions. Also, setting the bar low for yourself is an act of revolt against capitalism. I do, however, want to write more, and I would like the courage to “decompartmentalize” this part of myself. I realized recently that it does not make sense to write a blog, want people to read it, and then deliberately hide it from everyone in my life. I have yet to act on this realization, but it’s in the works and expected to be implemented by 2050.

New Year’s Resolution #3: Try to reach a place in life where my mother can find my blog and neither of us will cry.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Lessons in Toxic Love, Learned From My Cat

close up photo of tabby cat — Pacto Visual on Unsplash

I like cats, in theory. They are independent enough to not bother you, but affectionate enough to make you feel loved. They’re aloof, which gives you unconsciously pleasant validation of your low self-image, but they aren’t human enough to vocalize their disdain in a manner reminiscent of your childhood caregivers. It’s the perfect balance.

But in reality, cats are narcissists, and like their human counterparts, they are manipulative, capable of smelling fear, and inexplicably attractive to me.

A few nights ago, I lay in bed asleep with my cat curled up on my chest. Not the most comfortable situation, but I thought it was sweet, until she reached out and clawed my face. Then I realized my favorite animal is far too much like my favorite type of human. They both present love as something that slowly cuts off your oxygen supply. I thought about this for a while, and the result of that profound introspection is the following: a list of signs that you may be in a toxic relationship, inspired by my experience with cats:

You travel for a month and return to find they didn’t miss you, barely remember you, and have started sleeping with your brother.

To be fair, I have never met a human who did this. But I credit my brother for that more than anything else.

They give you crap, and you clean it up, spritz the room with air freshener, and say, “This is great.”

We don’t own cats; we don’t have real authority over anything that successfully commands us to flush their toilet for them. But sometimes we give someone love, and they respond with a metaphorical litter box. Love is cleaning this up, we say. Maybe, but it’s delusional to think there won’t be poop in it again the next day.

You aren’t appreciated for the nice things you do, only punished if you stop doing them.

Spoiling someone is much easier than un-spoiling them. Have you ever put a cat on a diet? I was once responsible for my sister’s cat when she traveled, and he had been on a diet ever since she decided to bring him to Kuwait and discovered he exceeded the weight limit for hand luggage. I was supposed to enforce it.

She warned me that he could be very persuasive in his attempts to get food. Multiple times, if my hair was in a ponytail, he would bite it and attempt to drag me towards his food bowl. There was never a reward for feeding him. Slowly, he trained me to see the few moments of relief before his next attack as an expression of love.

He has a lot to answer for.

You unconsciously start congratulating yourself on how tolerant you are.

I know there are many reasons why people put up with mistreatment, and it’s not always because it feeds their self-image of being a nice, accepting person. But sometimes it’s a factor. I was very proud of the everything I endured while babysitting. At one point, the cat sunk his teeth into my arm, and I decided to record a video. I wanted evidence of what I was putting up with. How long would he keep biting me if I didn’t stop him? It turned out to be around 30 seconds. Now everyone will see what’s wrong with this animal, I thought.

No one said that. They said, “What’s wrong with you for letting him bite you like that?”

They jump into your lap within a few moments of meeting you.

How sweet, I thought. You must really love me. I should take you home immediately.

And I did. I adopted my cat a few days later for exactly that reason. And all she wanted was a warm place to sleep, which is only flattering for a limited amount of time, until you realize exactly what it means.

I have not slept in peace since. There is no part of my body she has not turned into a pillow. If I sleep on my side, she balances precariously on my hip bone, somehow convinced that if she just wills it strongly enough, I will not move a millimeter. Although that may be preferable to what a human would expect in the same situation, it’s not exactly easy.

They hurt you constantly even if they don’t mean to.

It’s not a cat’s fault they have claws. They don’t mean to scratch you when they walk across your arm or knead your leg. But it still happens. There’s no point in saying it doesn’t. You wouldn’t refuse to bandage a cut just because it was an accident, so why do we pretend an emotional wound isn’t there just because no one intended to give it to us? It’s not always that one person or the other is toxic; it’s the combination. Wish them peace, then give it to yourself.

Sometimes you just need to get a dog.

Is Depressed the New Normal?

I know everyone likes to believe that the newest generation is worse than all the previous ones, or that the world is in constant decline or possibly about to end. Complaining about “people these days” is the least original complaint in history–even though most statistics show that it isn’t based on fact. When it comes to vaccinations, health, and poverty, life is actually getting much better.

But—and it’s a very important but—this does not hold true for mental illness. We may have better treatment methods, but cases of anxiety and depression have been steadily on the rise since the 1930s. Suicide rates are down, but this is most probably because of the invention of antidepressants, not because fewer people are suffering in the first place. Seventy years ago we did not have the epidemics of eating disorders and self-harm that we do now, and that isn’t nostalgia speaking–it’s simply the truth.

Why is this so? My belief is that modern life is in conflict with our physiology, destining us for emotional issues. We were not made for the way we live. And so, our mental health is paying the price. Think about this: Two natural ways to fight depression are through exercise, because it releases endorphins, or through sun exposure, because vitamin D deficiency is a cause of depression. But how many of us work in jobs that require us to be physically active? How many of us spend significant time outdoors each day? As the world changes, it pushes us more and more inside buildings and into artificial light. This is not how we were meant to live.

In addition, modern life encourages us to be sedentary consumers, not because it’s best for us but because businesses profit when we do less of what fulfills us and spend money instead. Look at the messages you’re bombarded with on a daily basis. What do advertisements suggest you do to become happy? Yes, you can ignore advertisements–most of us don’t buy everything advertised to us. But marketing works on the principle that you need to feel there is something lacking in your life that the product can fix. In other words, we face an onslaught of images and messages designed to make us feel like we aren’t good enough whenever we turn on the TV, look at our iPhone, or even go outside. We don’t have to buy something for that idea to be internalized.

But the biggest change in the last century that contributes to increased mental health problems has got to be school. School has changed, and there are interesting historical reasons why. In the first half of the 20th century, homework was frowned upon and given rarely–until the Space Race and the Cold War. The American desire to compete with the Russians manifested in a more rigorous education system. From then on, the more challenging, the better, we said. Now, standardized testing cripples students with a fear of failure.

But all of this pressure is artificial. Is there anything inherent in learning that specifies we should be dealing with constant anxiety? It isn’t like we are learning to become soldiers or warriors. There is absolutely no reason why reading a book and reflecting on it should make you nervous. We learn in our everyday lives, and it doesn’t fill us with panic. Imagine someone trying to make a new recipe or play a new video game having an anxiety attack when they made a mistake. We would think this was highly abnormal. But we accept it in an academic culture–students cry over tests, have panic attacks in the bathroom, and we aren’t even surprised. If anything, the calm student is the exception, and their peers look at them with wonder but also think they ought to care more. We have accepted that school should trigger your fight-or-flight danger response even though there is no real danger.

This soul-crushing system has been put in place because we want an easy way to figure out if someone is good enough to be in our college or our company. It’s too difficult to figure out someone’s skills on our own; we need numbers and data we can analyze quickly. It makes sense to some extent, but we have taken it to the extreme. And this increases the pressure placed on us: as more people have degrees, the less meaning they have in the world, and the more we are expected to be able to do in addition to having succeeded academically. The world needs creative people right now, people with talents, and school doesn’t teach you to be talented. Schools are not designed to optimize individual student learning. They are designed to optimize financial resources and put numbers on qualities that can’t be defined in numbers.

And yet we call the reaction to this mental illness. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” said Jiddu Krishnamurti. And I agree. Life has always been hard, but we have made it unnecessarily difficult in a way we are not naturally equipped to deal with. People complain that the uptick in mental illness is due to over-diagnosis of normal human emotions. I agree and disagree, because these emotions are normal reactions, but they shouldn’t be existing to this extent. But how else are we supposed to react in an environment that harms and sickens us? The problem is that we are considered the problem, that we treat the sufferers instead of addressing what they are suffering from.

Are you and I sick? This is what I’ve been told. But I disagree: If I am ill, it is only because I live in a diseased world. It is only because everything around us is fighting to make us ill, and no one is trying to stop it.

Sensitivity is Not Weakness

scream

“Keep a stiff upper lip,” people like to say, or, “Make them wonder how you’re still smiling.” No matter what life does to you, you should get back up on your feet and face it all. Don’t you know that if you react properly under intense pressure, you might just turn into a diamond?

On one hand we are told that life is short and we should not spend it being miserable, that anyone or anything that makes us unhappy should be cut out of our lives. On the other, we hear about how our greatest strength is enduring hardship.

I don’t buy into this idea that putting up with stress and tragedy, letting it affect you as little as possible, is somehow superior. Some people do praise the courage that is required for vulnerability, and others say that “only the gentle are ever truly strong,” but none of these express the real value of sensitivity.

I used to think I was not a sensitive person, which was odd considering the emo journals I have from this time period (and all of my life), but the day a ouija board made me cry was the day I gave up that delusion.

I’ve wondered many times how other people manage what would be unbearable for me, but I also wonder if they have given up on happiness. The greatest advantage to sensitivity, I have found, is that it drives you to improve your life. I can’t handle what many people accept, and the result is that I’m forced to stand up for myself even though I naturally hate to.

When you feel deeply, you reach the limit of emotional pain that you can put up with sooner than others, and so you react sooner. When you experience your feelings viscerally, you can’t ignore them. When you can’t function until you’ve worked through your emotions—you work through them. It’s impossible for a highly sensitive person to accept a lifetime of stress and unhappiness, because these feelings will always be at the forefront of their consciousness. And this is why sensitivity is a strength: it is the force that propels you to improve your life when many people would simply stand still.

You may suffer more, but you will also be more responsive to joy. If a part of your body loses the ability to feel it will not be considered stronger than your other limbs but much weaker. After all, your body should know when to move away from a source of pain. And this is what sensitivity is. It protects us by pushing us away from what hurts us because it is harder to stay than to leave. The downside to this is that sometimes, if you’re like me, you may end up hiding in the bathroom when you’re uncomfortable (or under a desk), but that’s only temporary until you create a place for yourself that you don’t need to run away from.

What is sensitivity, really, except the expectation that we should be treated well? Hurtful actions are only those we do not accept as normal. And the belief that we deserve a good life, with people who love us well, is not a shortcoming. It is the very least we need to pursue our dreams, and we should not be apologizing for it.