#60 Welcoming the strange

On apologizing all the time for being where you actually are which is never where you want to be

I’ve been reading a crap ton of philosophy, and just like how when I read a lot of Joan Didion I start writing flat run-on sentences or how when I read Sam Irby I use an excess of All Caps: when I read philosophy I tend to write clinically and use very unnecessary words. Sorry in advance.

One of you sent me this (very short) LinkedIn post from Bayo Akomolafe. It’s worth reading in full—it’s short, I’ve read it about ten times—but if you don’t, the gist of it is that things fall apart in order to be apart. Things do not fall apart so they can reconstitute themselves into something better than before, into improvement or reward or an end worth the means. The mess is just the mess; the pain is just the pain; the shit is just the shit.

But in our culture of self-optimization and self-as-project, it’s almost impossible to not try and turn every negative or unwanted or messy experience into some kind of vehicle of learning, or growth opportunity, or what happens right before the miracle. It …