I'm Sorry You're An Asshole, Part 3: Literally The Most Important Thing I've Ever Learned

A thing that has nothing to do with COVID or politics. I know, right?

Soundtrack: Daughter, “Youth”

I’ve mentioned a few times that my husband and I had begun the process of pursuing infant adoption when we still lived in NY, got burned (after a tremendous amount of work and discomfort) by the agency when we moved to PA, and have been intending to start over once we both had steady employment.

As this has finally happened, it’s been on my mind again, and it reminded me of a project I had begun contemplating right before COVID hit that gave way to more urgent things.

I had considered writing a book, for which I would eventually pursue publication somewhere, that would be framed as an omnibus of the most important things about life that I would want to pass on to my future child, with the idea being that if I somehow died before teaching her all these things, she’d have something in my words that she could pick up when she was old enough to want that knowledge, and that possibly, some random strangers out in the world would some of it valuable if it was made available to them, too..

Much of my writing, professional and personal, spends a long time being drafted in my head- by the time I sit down I’ve mapped out 90% of what I’m going to write, with the remaining 10% being things that emerge when I read it through for revision or thoughts that arise during the act of writing the already planned stuff. I had divided my mental draft of “To my future daughter” into topics: love, money, self-care, virtues, values, etc. I had begun mentally crafting short chapters of conversational language about important ideas I’d want to impart to a child that was mine, with the idea that there were a few important things I’d learned the hard way thus far, and that having a head start on these truths would set a kid up for a more successful and happier life.

There was one idea that didn’t fit perfectly neatly into any one category, and after thinking about it for a long while, I realized it was because it was, really, the keystone of almost all the other little fortune cookies of wisdom- it held together nearly every separate area of thought I’d ever had about how to live better and be better, by my definitions of doing so.

It still is central to everything I think about, and has made me make better choices and more or less protected me from getting brainwashed or deceived for any great length of time. It has kept me from becoming too crazy or weird as I’ve explored various beliefs, ideologies, and ways of thinking as I’ve struggled to navigate challenging times in my life (especially the current one).

I ultimately decided, back when I spent a lot of time mentally writing this book, that this idea would be the opening chapter, focused on explaining its importance, so that if the kid read nothing else but this, they’d have a good head start.

Here it is:

Never, ever lie to yourself. Be 100% honest with yourself, all the time, no matter what, about who you are.

Some elements of this bear some important clarification/emphasis:

1. “To Yourself.” This is you, speaking internally, to yourself. I am not suggesting that anyone needs to teach themselves to be outwardly 100% honest to everyone, everywhere, all the time, to have no secrets and to never lie. Practicing this doesn’t require you to tell anyone else these things, ever, if you don’t want to. All of us will probably lie to others at some point in our lives- just don’t be lying to yourself while you’re at it.

2. “Who you are.” This means the things that make you happy or unhappy, the things you like and hate, the people you like and hate, your conception of your abilities and traits, your beliefs, and so forth.

I have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of human unhappiness in the modern era arises from the fact that a great many of us are lying to ourselves a lot of the time as a “survival” tool. We convince ourselves we like things we don’t, that we care about things we don’t, that we are things we aren’t, that we’re happy doing things that we’re really doing for some other reason, and on and on.

This actually describes a great many people I’ve known. I call this a “survival mechanism” because much of how we do this is good old Cognitive Dissonance- the mechanism by which we convince ourselves that an unpleasant reality is what we actually wanted all along (and was actually our idea).

But a great deal of this is also cultural programming- the water we swim in. We’re told that it’s bad, wrong, sinful, evil, to want or feel certain things. And honestly, sometimes it is (looking at you, “Minor-Attracted Persons”). But here’s the thing. When we convince ourselves we don’t actually feel something that we do, it doesn’t change that feeling- it simply suppresses our thinking about it. We can work very hard to talk ourselves into a life choice or a way of living, but the original seed that made this something that required us to play this kind of rhetorical jiu-jitsu with ourselves remains.

All this is to say that it is not necessarily desirable, good, or optimal to act on or “go with” everything we think, feel, and desire. That’s not what this truth is about, at all. But it’s absolutely never the right choice to lie to ourselves and say that we do not think, feel, or desire the thing.

For example, I- like every single human being alive- have some decidedly dark corners to me. I’m not going to tell you what they are, because they’re frankly none of your business, and the whole point of “to yourself” is that I’m obliged to be honest with ME about those things, not paint them all over myself and walk around the world making a scene.

But I know what those dark corners are. All of them! I know I want some things that are antisocial, and have desires that would probably be bad or harmful if I acted on them. (Again, we literally all do. Yes, even fucking you.) So I don’t. But pivotal to attaining that level of self-control is remaining honest and aware of the fact that I’d like to do things I shouldn’t. It means I know how to find outlets for them that are productive and prosocial (or at least aren’t harmful). It also means I’m not surprised or caught off-guard by a subconscious that I’ve been lying to for years, or that I come across as anything other than genuine with the people I meet. (Being honest with others, though not strictly required, becomes a lot easier when you’ve mastered being honest with yourself.)

If my parents had been honest with themselves, they wouldn’t have married each other. My mother wouldn’t have married ANYone, and she wouldn’t have had children. They’d have made myriad other choices that I saw the consequences of growing up, and would have been less confused, frustrated, angry, and sad people. They came to these realizations decades later, only having the courage to admit them to themselves long after the consequences had passed. And it was frankly a waste for both of them.

And I, their child, learned precisely the wrong lessons from this kind of self-convincing: I wish Husbandmouth and I had gotten married many, many years before we actually did. It worked out fine in the end, but it was a waste of a long time that could have meant something different.

This example is the sort of banal despair millions of us live with, but it can play out in far more dramatic ways, too. When we refuse to face or acknowledge the dark, the dangerous, the unacceptable, or the difficult in ourselves, they inevitably explode to the surface. We find ways to control the way others respond to us to maintain the lie we tell ourselves, and can brutalize ourselves to distract our focus from what we’ve buried. We come to literal violence, abuse, and despair.

Life doesn’t become perfect or simple when we become 100% honest with ourselves about who and what we are, but it heads off one massive source of problems: any decision we make while under the influence of self-delusion will ALWAYS be a wrong one. We can give ourselves the gift of completely eliminating a logical error from our choices. There will be plenty of other traps along the way, always.

I filed this article under “I’m Sorry You’re An Asshole” because that thread is about honesty. In reality, “self-honesty” is probably even more important than talking about the lies and delusions of the people trying to work their evil on us.

When you know who you really are, it’s a lot easier to see who your real friends and enemies are.

It is probably the most powerful discipline to arm yourself with for the days that are coming.

And, at the risk of being corny, I’ll end with what I would have said in the book, to my imaginary daughter: if you’re honest with yourself about who you are, I’ll always be behind you.