https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961
(Click play (above) first to listen to this reading, inspired by “Letters out Loud” -
Apologies if I mispronounce Khartoum and Mahdi It would be 20+ years from the date of this essay to my own birth… and some news, names and histories did not make it to my formal schooling. Also… this is an experiment so the plosives right at the beginning are evidence of my novice status in terms of equipment…)
Hello blog readers! (the accompanying audio is my ‘one-take’ reading of the piece which is a good place to start before diving into the rest below!) It’s been a minute since my last writing here. Doing something a bit different. Sharing something from my personal library of ‘treasured readings.’ I return to this piece often, putting it in conversation with another set of thoughts, those of the existentialists, and about where our identify comes from. “All of this things can give your life meaning, and at the same time, none of them can.”
Now that we are engrossed in an era of social media, where it isn’t ourselves, but merely these digital projections that hold court in public opinion, I find that my own compass towards ‘self-respect’ diminishes my interest in ‘going viral.’ Very much in line with my friend
Much better to be well known, and well liked by a small number of people, than to contort or conform to those most ‘public’ needs and desires of an audience for outrage and sensationalism. (though I confess a comfort at the return of Jon Stewart to the Daily Show, many other modern commentators - Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro on the right, Joe Rogan in the… middle?, Bill Maher on the right… There are many people who come to mind at the ‘people who could not possibly respect themselves, sleep easily enough.”)
Though you can probably tell from my emphasis if you listen along, here are my favorite lines:
"Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.”
to me this is evocative of regret mixed with imposter syndrome, and other comparators - perhaps worsening in the era of social media. Good counter measure is to read Brene Brown “The gifts of imperfection.”
“Crossing a border with borrowed credentials… Self Deception remains the most difficult deception”
A modern day understanding of this concept is ‘imposter syndrome’ I believe. Both among those who have the privilege of unearned confidence, and among those who deceive themselves into thinking that they couldn’t possibly matter if they spoke up - thus sealing themselves into a prison of a victim-mindset.
”Again, it is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has its price. People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk…”
What risks do I take? What would I do if I used 2% more courage?
“call forth deeper, stronger disciplines, values instilled long before. It is a kind of ritual, helping us to remember who and what we are. In order to remember it, one must have known it.”
this line obviously inspired some of my thinking on the concept of love - that to give it, one has to first KNOW it of and for themselves. Though Didion’s 1961 essay pre-dates some ‘flower children’ and ‘free love’ that would be to come, I think our 2020 version of ‘self-love’ is closer and yet perhaps distinct from this self-respect. I suspect they are closely intertwined.
”If we do not respect ourselves, … we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give.”
This one hits hardest for me, as I was quite a chameleon and always playing ‘parts’ to make things work. It did and does strike me as out-of-character to uphold boundaries and create conflict - something that a person with self-respect would NOT struggle with.
“One runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
please if you’re not familiar, also check out Walcott’s poem, love after love.
Thanks for reading - and thanks Joan for your wisdom!
-Ethan
P.S. Check out some of these bad-ass portaits of her and her family…
If you want more Didion (which I would recommend!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Didion:_The_Center_Will_Not_Hold
P.P.S
In an interesting serendipity, her documentary title is also a reference to one of my favorite lines of poetry, (also captured by the title of one her books of personal essays “slouching towards bethlehem” - which I will end with here:
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
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