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A review by nickfourtimes
How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life by Heather Havrilesky
5.0
1) 'I'm Tired of Being So Nice'
"Maybe you need to ask yourself, 'How secretly furious am I?'
I can certainly understand why you'd feel so angry. By simply showing up and being a woman, you're asked to satisfy an incredibly tangled and contradictory set of demands. You are supposed to be assertive but not too assertive. You are supposed to speak your mind but only on subjects about which everyone already agrees. You are supposed to toe the party line while pretending that it's your personal choice.
Trust me, I've been there. So this is what I want you to accept, first and foremost: You are a nice person, and you're also full of anger. You're a walking tangle of contradictions. That's okay. Most of us are like that. Women, most of all. How could we not be? People want us to be sexy warriors who roll over and play dead on command. [...]
Experiments in asking for exactly what you want will go badly. Do it anyway. Do it and expect people to react badly. Because you're sensitive, you won't like this. Think about how they feel, and try to empathize. Think about how you might soften your message. Watch how other people do it. I know it sounds like a management technique, but good communicators usually start with something positive, then move to the negative gently: 'I love this about you, but I have to draw the line here.' 'I know you're trying your best, but this is what I still need from you.' 'I care about you so much and you're such an important friend to me, but I don't think I can do this one thing.'
Listen closely when someone asserts his or her boundaries. Because that's healthy behavior, even if it's not to your taste at this point. Learn from them. Because most people avoid problems instead of asserting themselves. They clam up. They disappear. That's the coward's path, even if it's a path a lot of us take.
I used to admire people who could hang with anything. Now the women I admire the most are women who never pretend to be different than they are. Women like that express their anger. They admit when they're down. They don't beat themselves up over their bad moods. They allow themselves to be grumpy sometimes. They grant themselves the right to be grouchy, or to say nothing, or to decline your offer without a lengthy explanation.
Sometimes it seems like the rest of us are on a never-ending self improvement conveyor belt. We're running faster and faster, struggling to be our best selves, but every day we fail and we hate ourselves for it.
Fuck that. Let's be mortal. Let's not be sexy warrior princesses or burlesque dancers in burkas or conquistadors with cookies in the oven. How many years do we have to wait just to speak our minds? Let's be flinty and unreasonable instead. Let's tell the truth, without a smile. Let's let our words drop, one by one, without explanation, without apology, like the first few pebbles before a landslide.
Polly"
2) 'Drunk No More'
"Remember, you only find that kind of adoring energy repellent because you hate being seen clearly, because at some level, you hate yourself. You only back away from it because you want to back away from yourself. You don't want a crystal clear, high-definition mirror. You want to spot your smeary reflection in the side of a napkin holder, four beers into an afternoon bender. You want to be a sexy, indifferent blur, because then you're never still enough to notice that you're disappointing to yourself, that you're depressed, that you're running from the truth.
Before you can tolerate sobriety and the attentions of sober men, you have to learn to tolerate looking into that crystal clear, high-definition mirror. You have to look at yourself and see someone who's not invincible or unfailingly sexy.
You are weak and raw and broken, and that's okay. That's where real life begins. Throw yourself into that rawness. Dive into a bunch of stories about absorbing and leaning into disappointment and loss and melancholy as a way of moving through it. Go watch Living Out Loud or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Read The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Read Mating by Norman Rush. Being raw means connecting to other people's trials and noticing how we all have to find our own answers, we all have to learn how to show up and breathe without grasping for something to deliver us from our own pain. When you resist your own rawness and pain, you only create more pain for yourself.
You have to make peace with yourself. Push away the bad voices, again and again, and replace them with something kinder and more patient. Say to yourself, 'I'm broken right now, but I'm doing my best.' Take in the electricity, the shivers, the rough-hewn fear of your raw state, and eventually, if you welcome these feelings in enough without fighting them, you'll find inspiration and comfort there. Let this crisis guide you to higher ground.
Polly"
3) 'How Do I Get Over This Betrayal?'
"Instead of seeing your balance of days on earth as either a sad, lonely slog through single motherhood or a rosy daydream thanks to some magical second marriage, you need to begin by painting a picture that doesn't include love. You need to stop making room in your life for someone else's love and start making room for yourself instead. When you feel proud of yourself and care for yourself, you won't worry about betrayal as much. When you can imagine a beautiful life even in the absence of romantic love, finding love or losing it again won't seem nearly as scary.
This doesn't mean you have to give up on ever finding love. But right now, finding the right man is just too important to you. I understand that, and I can relate to it very well. But you have to work your way past that. You have to forget men for a while and think only of yourself and your son. He is about to be a big kid, sooner than you can imagine. Slow down and drink him in. Drink yourself in, too. Drink in your life as it is, right now. Recognize how much happiness is already at your fingertips, and savor it as much as you can.
As Arthur Ashe once said, 'Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.' There is no injustice in your life, not anymore. You are healthy and your son is healthy, and this world wants nothing but happiness for both of you. I know it's not that easy. But just for today, pretend that it is. Love yourself and love him. Maybe this is exactly where you're supposed to be.
Polly"
4) 'Lame Job, Lame Life'
"As long as you're walking around saying you don't have it, then you don't. And having it is sometimes as easy as saying, 'DAMN I'M GOOD,' over and over again. You say it before you start writing. You say it the second you write something decent. You say it when you're done. Can you do that or can't you? [...]
Above all, believe. Cultivate your swagger. Make this your new religion: You are funny and talented, and you're going to try something new. This is the exact right time for that. This is the most important year of your life, and for once you are NOT going to let yourself down. If you fall down and feel depressed, you will get back up. If you feel lethargic and scared, you will try something else: a new routine, a new roommate situation, a healthier diet. You will read books about comedy. You will work tirelessly and take pride in your tireless work. And you will take time every few hours to stop and say to yourself, 'Look at me. I'm doing it. I'm chasing my dream. I am following my calling.' It doesn't matter if your dreams come true, if agents swoon and audiences cheer. Trust me on that: It truly doesn't matter. What matters is the feeling that you're doing it, every day. What matters is the work-diving in, feeling your way in the dark, finding the words, trusting yourself, embracing your weird voice, celebrating your quirks on the page, believing in all of it. What matters is the feeling that you're not following someone else around, that you're not half-assing this, that you're not waiting for something to happen, that you're not waiting for your whole life to start.
What matters is you, all alone at your desk at five in the morning. I write this from my own desk at five in the morning, my favorite place, a place where I know who I am and what I'm meant to accomplish in this life. Savor that precious space. That space will feel like purgatory at first, because you'll realize that it all depends on you. That space will feel like salvation eventually, because you'll realize that it all depends on you.
Polly
P.S. DAMN I'M GOOD."
5) 'The Bean Eaters'
"I'll bet your friend's parents haven't given up yet. Uncertainty and failure might look like the end of the road to you. But uncertainty is a part of life. Facing uncertainty and failure doesn't always make people weaker and weaker until they give up. Sometimes it wakes them up, and it's like they can see the beauty around them for the first time. Sometimes losing everything makes you realize how little you actually need. Sometimes losing everything sends you out into the world to breathe in the air, to pick some flowery weeds, to take in a new day.
Because this life is full of promise, always. It's full of beads and dolls and chipped plates; it's full of twinklings and twinges. It is possible to admit that life is a struggle and also embrace the fact that small things like sons who call you and beloved dogs in framed pictures and birds that tell you to drink your fucking tea-matter. They matter a lot.
Stop trying to make sense of things. You can't think your way through this. Open your heart and drink in this glorious day. You are young, and you will find little things that will make you grateful to be alive. Believe in what you love now, with all of your heart, and you will love more and more until everything around you is love. Love yourself now, exactly as sad and scared and flawed as you are, and you will grow up and live a rich life and show up for other people, and you'll know exactly how big that is.
Let's celebrate this moment together. There are twinklings and twinges, right here, in this moment. It is enough. Let's find the eastern towhee.
Polly"
"Maybe you need to ask yourself, 'How secretly furious am I?'
I can certainly understand why you'd feel so angry. By simply showing up and being a woman, you're asked to satisfy an incredibly tangled and contradictory set of demands. You are supposed to be assertive but not too assertive. You are supposed to speak your mind but only on subjects about which everyone already agrees. You are supposed to toe the party line while pretending that it's your personal choice.
Trust me, I've been there. So this is what I want you to accept, first and foremost: You are a nice person, and you're also full of anger. You're a walking tangle of contradictions. That's okay. Most of us are like that. Women, most of all. How could we not be? People want us to be sexy warriors who roll over and play dead on command. [...]
Experiments in asking for exactly what you want will go badly. Do it anyway. Do it and expect people to react badly. Because you're sensitive, you won't like this. Think about how they feel, and try to empathize. Think about how you might soften your message. Watch how other people do it. I know it sounds like a management technique, but good communicators usually start with something positive, then move to the negative gently: 'I love this about you, but I have to draw the line here.' 'I know you're trying your best, but this is what I still need from you.' 'I care about you so much and you're such an important friend to me, but I don't think I can do this one thing.'
Listen closely when someone asserts his or her boundaries. Because that's healthy behavior, even if it's not to your taste at this point. Learn from them. Because most people avoid problems instead of asserting themselves. They clam up. They disappear. That's the coward's path, even if it's a path a lot of us take.
I used to admire people who could hang with anything. Now the women I admire the most are women who never pretend to be different than they are. Women like that express their anger. They admit when they're down. They don't beat themselves up over their bad moods. They allow themselves to be grumpy sometimes. They grant themselves the right to be grouchy, or to say nothing, or to decline your offer without a lengthy explanation.
Sometimes it seems like the rest of us are on a never-ending self improvement conveyor belt. We're running faster and faster, struggling to be our best selves, but every day we fail and we hate ourselves for it.
Fuck that. Let's be mortal. Let's not be sexy warrior princesses or burlesque dancers in burkas or conquistadors with cookies in the oven. How many years do we have to wait just to speak our minds? Let's be flinty and unreasonable instead. Let's tell the truth, without a smile. Let's let our words drop, one by one, without explanation, without apology, like the first few pebbles before a landslide.
Polly"
2) 'Drunk No More'
"Remember, you only find that kind of adoring energy repellent because you hate being seen clearly, because at some level, you hate yourself. You only back away from it because you want to back away from yourself. You don't want a crystal clear, high-definition mirror. You want to spot your smeary reflection in the side of a napkin holder, four beers into an afternoon bender. You want to be a sexy, indifferent blur, because then you're never still enough to notice that you're disappointing to yourself, that you're depressed, that you're running from the truth.
Before you can tolerate sobriety and the attentions of sober men, you have to learn to tolerate looking into that crystal clear, high-definition mirror. You have to look at yourself and see someone who's not invincible or unfailingly sexy.
You are weak and raw and broken, and that's okay. That's where real life begins. Throw yourself into that rawness. Dive into a bunch of stories about absorbing and leaning into disappointment and loss and melancholy as a way of moving through it. Go watch Living Out Loud or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Read The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Read Mating by Norman Rush. Being raw means connecting to other people's trials and noticing how we all have to find our own answers, we all have to learn how to show up and breathe without grasping for something to deliver us from our own pain. When you resist your own rawness and pain, you only create more pain for yourself.
You have to make peace with yourself. Push away the bad voices, again and again, and replace them with something kinder and more patient. Say to yourself, 'I'm broken right now, but I'm doing my best.' Take in the electricity, the shivers, the rough-hewn fear of your raw state, and eventually, if you welcome these feelings in enough without fighting them, you'll find inspiration and comfort there. Let this crisis guide you to higher ground.
Polly"
3) 'How Do I Get Over This Betrayal?'
"Instead of seeing your balance of days on earth as either a sad, lonely slog through single motherhood or a rosy daydream thanks to some magical second marriage, you need to begin by painting a picture that doesn't include love. You need to stop making room in your life for someone else's love and start making room for yourself instead. When you feel proud of yourself and care for yourself, you won't worry about betrayal as much. When you can imagine a beautiful life even in the absence of romantic love, finding love or losing it again won't seem nearly as scary.
This doesn't mean you have to give up on ever finding love. But right now, finding the right man is just too important to you. I understand that, and I can relate to it very well. But you have to work your way past that. You have to forget men for a while and think only of yourself and your son. He is about to be a big kid, sooner than you can imagine. Slow down and drink him in. Drink yourself in, too. Drink in your life as it is, right now. Recognize how much happiness is already at your fingertips, and savor it as much as you can.
As Arthur Ashe once said, 'Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.' There is no injustice in your life, not anymore. You are healthy and your son is healthy, and this world wants nothing but happiness for both of you. I know it's not that easy. But just for today, pretend that it is. Love yourself and love him. Maybe this is exactly where you're supposed to be.
Polly"
4) 'Lame Job, Lame Life'
"As long as you're walking around saying you don't have it, then you don't. And having it is sometimes as easy as saying, 'DAMN I'M GOOD,' over and over again. You say it before you start writing. You say it the second you write something decent. You say it when you're done. Can you do that or can't you? [...]
Above all, believe. Cultivate your swagger. Make this your new religion: You are funny and talented, and you're going to try something new. This is the exact right time for that. This is the most important year of your life, and for once you are NOT going to let yourself down. If you fall down and feel depressed, you will get back up. If you feel lethargic and scared, you will try something else: a new routine, a new roommate situation, a healthier diet. You will read books about comedy. You will work tirelessly and take pride in your tireless work. And you will take time every few hours to stop and say to yourself, 'Look at me. I'm doing it. I'm chasing my dream. I am following my calling.' It doesn't matter if your dreams come true, if agents swoon and audiences cheer. Trust me on that: It truly doesn't matter. What matters is the feeling that you're doing it, every day. What matters is the work-diving in, feeling your way in the dark, finding the words, trusting yourself, embracing your weird voice, celebrating your quirks on the page, believing in all of it. What matters is the feeling that you're not following someone else around, that you're not half-assing this, that you're not waiting for something to happen, that you're not waiting for your whole life to start.
What matters is you, all alone at your desk at five in the morning. I write this from my own desk at five in the morning, my favorite place, a place where I know who I am and what I'm meant to accomplish in this life. Savor that precious space. That space will feel like purgatory at first, because you'll realize that it all depends on you. That space will feel like salvation eventually, because you'll realize that it all depends on you.
Polly
P.S. DAMN I'M GOOD."
5) 'The Bean Eaters'
"I'll bet your friend's parents haven't given up yet. Uncertainty and failure might look like the end of the road to you. But uncertainty is a part of life. Facing uncertainty and failure doesn't always make people weaker and weaker until they give up. Sometimes it wakes them up, and it's like they can see the beauty around them for the first time. Sometimes losing everything makes you realize how little you actually need. Sometimes losing everything sends you out into the world to breathe in the air, to pick some flowery weeds, to take in a new day.
Because this life is full of promise, always. It's full of beads and dolls and chipped plates; it's full of twinklings and twinges. It is possible to admit that life is a struggle and also embrace the fact that small things like sons who call you and beloved dogs in framed pictures and birds that tell you to drink your fucking tea-matter. They matter a lot.
Stop trying to make sense of things. You can't think your way through this. Open your heart and drink in this glorious day. You are young, and you will find little things that will make you grateful to be alive. Believe in what you love now, with all of your heart, and you will love more and more until everything around you is love. Love yourself now, exactly as sad and scared and flawed as you are, and you will grow up and live a rich life and show up for other people, and you'll know exactly how big that is.
Let's celebrate this moment together. There are twinklings and twinges, right here, in this moment. It is enough. Let's find the eastern towhee.
Polly"