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A few thoughts on self-centeredness and the world at large

Mar 15, 2024

The isms and asms exhaust me. While we all devolve further and further into arguments about fascists and communists and capitalists and nationalists, the world burns and people die from missiles that shouldn’t exist. My pacifist nature is constantly called into question, as if my gentleness and compassion have no place in a world where violence, power, and money are the only ways to get what you want.

The path of nonviolence sounds more and more like a lie we tell ourselves to feel superior to the opposition. But who is the opposition? The Fox News pundits? Out-of-touch World leaders? The people who refuse to mask? Our own minds?

When did it become cool to be miserable and hateful 24/7? That’s not very punk rock of us. When did it become cool to be ironic and a “troll” just for the hell of it? Oh, right. I guess whenever it became cool to hoard money and cool to wield power and cool to subjugate other people we deem “lesser”. So when exactly? Since human beings decided to “own land,” “colonize bodies,” and perhaps even when we “found religion.” (Ooh, scare quotes. Can’t wait to see who gets mad at me next!) I’d also wager it really got kicked up a notch when we all got our grubby little hands on a smart phone.

We find ourselves lost in bubbles of our own vapid bullshit. Being painfully aware of the world’s many issues, in addition to your own insecurities and mental illness, only gets you so far. No matter how many TikToks you watch or infographics you share, unless you go out and do the work, things will only ever get slightly better, if at all.

In a world marked by the incessant need to twist yourself into a “brand” to please, influence, or repulse the people you went to high school with and the relatives you haven’t seen in well over a decade, I find myself living in the delusion of my own “unique” sorrow. Who’s looking at my story? Who’s liking my post with all the carefully curated photos I took with the intention of posting them like it’s just a casual “photo dump”? Do they think I’m pretty? Do they think I’m cool!? Are all the men I’ve ever met looking at a 26-year-old me and wishing I was still 19 and naïve (i.e. somehow more fuckable)? What does it mean to project this image of womanhood? Who’s looking at me? Who’s talking about me? Who’s looking at me? Who’s following me? Who’s LOOKING AT ME?

Constantly crafting a new persona is utterly exhausting. I’m doing it right now. I want you to pay attention to what I’m writing. I want you to think I’m good. I want you to think I’m cool. I want you to think of me as intelligent. I want you to take me seriously. I want people to know me more for my words and my taste, rather than who I’m dating and what I’m wearing. I want to be thought of as successful and interesting, rather than become fodder for some Southern biddy’s occasional gossip.

It’s all still a persona though because, truthfully, I’m also trying not to care anymore. It’s difficult and borderline impossible for a people pleaser like me, but I’m trying. More than anything, this is me trying not to care what people think about me.

“Every woman knows what I'm talking about when I say girls grow up with a desire to please, to cede their power to other people. . . everyone knows about the sometimes aggressive and manipulative ways men often exert power in the world, and how by using the word empowered to describe women, men are simply maintaining their own power and control.”

-Kim Gordon, Girl In A Band

In recent years, I find myself telling people the same answer over and over again whenever they ask my opinion about the state of things: bleak. It’s fucking bleak.

And yet, you know where I actually happen to find some semblance of hope? It’s not where you think it is. It’s not on Instagram or even in the words of my sought-after friends or well-meaning family. It’s found in the cars of subway trains, where people still watch out for each other and exist together in a sort of solidarity unlike any other. If you’ve never had to take public transportation regularly, I feel genuinely a little sorry for you. It’s one of the only connective tissues left in an otherwise increasingly isolated landscape.

Until you’ve stood with at least a hundred other people while the train stalls for the third time, a baby starts crying, and the stench of human beings who forgot to wear deodorant that day wafts over to you, I don’t know if you’ve truly experienced all that life has to offer. Unless you’ve seen a man help a young woman and her child up off the floor after they’ve fallen just because it’s the right thing to do, I don’t know if you’ve truly experienced all that life has to offer. Unless you’ve had a long conversation with the older woman sitting next to you about her ruthlessly shitty day, I don’t know if you’ve truly experienced all that life has to offer. Unless you’ve had the man sitting across from you ask for a book recommendation based on the book you’re reading, I don’t know if you’ve truly experienced all that life has to offer.

You all think I’m joking, but I’m serious. Sometimes, I connect more with the strangers I meet on the train than I do with the people who share my last name.

Greater still is the rush of taking the steps back to the street, in line with all the other commuters who somehow live in the same neighborhood. One minute you’re all together, walking up, out, and around the bend. The next, you’ve dispersed, like dandelion seeds in the wind, off to apartments and families and lives you’ll never think or know anything about beyond a momentary inkling.

It is in these moments I feel most connected to the world, to other human beings. I feel present. I’m not scrolling or venting or complaining or living in the past. I’m simply alive and existing next to other people of every race, gender, creed, religion, and class.

It’s when I go outside, stay off the phone, and look around that I realize how much of my selfishness is rooted in insecurity and the isolation of a social media-minded lifestyle. I leave my apartment building every morning, turn the corner, and there, I see how little of this emerging adult ennui even matters. It really doesn’t. It’s just spinning.

I thank the universe everyday that I’m not the center of it.

Here’s what I’ve been doing lately: