Edition #43: Choosing a Happier Story

Plus, Finland's National Jealousy Day, a questionable TikTok tale, and a trick for finding more affordable skincare

A Note From the Editor

There are so many stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and those stories weave together to form the fabric of our identities, even weightier than the cumulation of our digitally archived internet personas. There are other stories, too, the ones people tell us about ourselves, the ones we choose to believe, the ones we make significant. These stories yield more power than we realize; they cling to us, propelling us forward or dragging us backward, making it impossible to move on.

The story of my younger years is one that I’ve held close to my chest for the bulk of my adult life. I’ve gone through dense periods of reflection about it, I’ve filled countless pages of journals with recounted experiences, I’ve cried to therapists and retold stories to the occasional friend during intimate moments that called for vulnerability. Though I do not want to admit it — because who wants to give anything they cannot control that sort of power? — the story I tell myself about those years has fundamentally shaped me. I can see the evidence in my life, in the mile markers, the risky decisions, the determination to succeed at the expense of all else.

In an often recited version of internal dialogue, I repeat to myself: I had a difficult childhood. There was not a lot of money, or sometimes no money at all. Mental health issues and alcoholism ran rampant during certain periods of time, taking up all the space in our household and leaving room for nothing else. There are particular nights, facial expressions, and overheard conversations from this period that are forever branded in my brain. They come back to me out of the blue, often in my dreams, and no matter how hard I’ve worked to bury them, they always find their way back.

But I often forget that those harsher moments do not live alone in my memory bank. I was in a sweet little General Store in Poultney, VT last weekend, and as I walked through the framed wooden doorway and into a walk-in closet-sized room, I stopped dead in my tracks, dazzled. Twinkling lights dangled from corner to corner across the paneled walls, angelic ornaments hung from the ceiling, small, ornate Christmas trees crowded every surface of shelf space. I’m not sure whether music was playing, but when I close my eyes and recount the image of this room, I swear I can hear it — soft piano notes, a warmth radiating from somewhere inside of me. Without warning, I was transported to one of the most precious memories of my life: Christmas, around the time I was in fourth or fifth grade.

Every year right after Thanksgiving, my siblings and I would fetch the decorations down from the attic and deck out the house in a way that skirted the line between charming and overkill. It was never just a tree — not the perfect kind, either, the kind that is fake and missing a few branches and covered with seven kids’ worth of homemade ornaments — it was the stockings, 10 total, for all of us kids, our parents and our dog, with more added later for significant others and children, a little couch filled with Christmas themed stuffed animals, laminated pages touting various clip art and versions of “Merry Christmas,” dutifully designed by us on Microsoft Paint. While the outside of our home sat mostly bare, inside was our turf, and we approached the task with great care.

We never had a fancy meal on Christmas Eve. Instead, all seven of us kids would sleep in our parent’s bedroom, our parents disappearing into another corner of the house like ghosts. I was too young to realize we were on borrowed time; that though this arrangement happened every year without fail, there would be a time not far in the future when my siblings would have their own husbands and wives and children, making this tradition impossible — but in my mind, I could only imagine that it would always be this way. Though our ages ranged from 23 (my eldest brother) to 5 (my younger brother and sister, who are twins), tradition said that we were all to go to bed at the same time and on Christmas morning, we couldn’t go downstairs until everyone was awake. Us younger kids were up by 5 am, our internal clocks screaming that it was time to dive into our gifts, and we would jump on the older ones, shaking their shoulders, shouting, begging, laughing, wondering how they could possibly sleep at a time like this.

No matter how little money we may have had during the year, my mom would go way overboard for Christmas. As we raced downstairs, there she was waiting, directing us younger kids to our dedicated present piles. I remember my dad holding a camcorder in one hand, balancing a cup of coffee in the other. I shmoozed it up for the camera, making a big show of opening my stocking first, doing everything I could to extend the serotonin release that occurred while tearing open the red and green paper. The anticipation was the best part, and it was difficult not to feel like a deflated balloon when the morning festivities were over. That year, though, my excitement carried on through the day. My dad made us eggs benedict for breakfast, I went on a walk with my two older sisters (who, unbeknownst to me at the time, would later become my best friends), I stabbed at the stubborn plastic packaging on a few of my new toys and played with them just long enough that their novelty didn’t wear off.

It’s that night I remember most clearly: everyone was in the kitchen, jovial. My parents and older siblings were loose and loud, probably a little tipsy off of the celebratory wine that covered the counters. Fleetwood Mac was playing, and I grabbed the camcorder from the living room and narrated the scene, panning across the messy floor, still littered with discarded wrapping paper and forgotten toys, before walking slowly into the kitchen. This is an image I’ll never forget: a couple of my sisters and brothers and my mom, holding hands in a circle, dancing like fools. Another sibling holding one of the twins, twirling them around, dipping them back, bringing them up for a kiss on the cheek. Everyone was smiling, laughing, carefree. Happy. I stood there in the corner of the room with my camcorder, recording the spectacle, and announced, “This is the best day of my life.”

I’m considering the stories we tell ourselves, about our lives, our histories, who we are. A duality will always exist in these stories, the good and the bad, but I’ve only just begun to recognize that I have a say in the way I choose to frame my own narrative. I’ve often thought about my childhood with the air of a dissatisfied restaurant customer, one who only writes a Yelp review for the bad experiences while wholly ignoring the good ones. It makes sense, because our bodies and mind store trauma in ways that are harder to overcome, but still, I’d like to work on giving equal weight to the good times. To replay moments like that Christmas, or a Sunday, post-church breakfast at Golden Corral with my mom, or the time my older sister taught me how to apply makeup without looking like the Joker. I want a trick to recount those joys in the same way I’ve revisited the hard times, and I want to think about them just as often.

Cheers, my dears, and I’d love to know: what story do you tell about yourself, about your childhood? Has that story shifted over the years, and have you been able to gain a new perspective on events that have transpired in your life?

I’ll leave you with this quote. I can’t seem to find where it came from, probably an essay, but I saved it last year and revist it often:

“'Stories conspire not to be forgotten; they scheme to outlast their moment.'“

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Three Pieces of Content Worth Consuming

1. In Finland, You Can See Anyone’s Taxes For One Day a Year. This might be one of the craziest, most fascinating stories I’ve read this year. While the subject of tax returns is top of mind for Americans at the moment, consider this: on “National Jealousy Day,” Finland makes every citizen’s taxable income public and searchable. Business owners, celebrities, friends, lovers, co-workers, anyone’s information is fair game. Skeptics think the practice is performative, a way for Finns to say, "Look, we are so honest and good,” but for Finns, the practice is rooted in creating more transparency surrounding income disparity, wage gaps, and meant to hold those wealthy individuals accountable to paying their fair share of taxes. Can you imagine if America had a day like this? It would be like our version of The Purge, but even more insane, since we are obsessed with money and secrecy surrounding it. This quote from the article is the best, most Finnish thing I’ve ever read:

   Esa Saarinen, a professor of philosophy at Aalto University in Helsinki, described it as “a fairly positive form of gossip.”

2. How Do You Convince Someone to Care About Other People? I would classify this essay — penned in 2017 and sadly, still hyper-relevant — as required reading for our current political landscape. In our age of utter polarization, trying to reach out and have a productive conversation with someone on the other side often feels like trying to convince a stray cat to come inside and cook you scrambled eggs for breakfast. I’ve struggled with this, often leaving cyclical conversations in which no one is really listening to the other feeling frustrated, wishing I had a better comeback or a more compelling argument, but this essay puts it perfectly: I don’t know how to convince someone to care about other people, and if you don’t care about others, then we are fundamentally different people.

3. An 89-Year-Old Pizza Delivery Man, A Large Tip, and TikTok. I have conflicting emotions about this one, which is being positioned as a "feel good" story. A family who frequently orders pizza from their local Papa John’s records their interactions with a sweet, 89-year-old delivery man and posts them on TikTok. Through these videos, their account, @vendingheads, gains a mass of followers. Recently, they’ve asked their followers to contribute money to the delivery man, who they can all agree should not have to deliver pizza at 89 to subsidize his meager Social Security wages. They raise $12,000 for the delivery man and deliver the check to him in person, all while recording the interaction for their channel. The delivery man is moved to tears, and at one point he asks, "What is TikTok?”, leading me to believe that, until now, he's had no idea that he is the star of a TikTok channel whose owners will likely financially benefit from his likeness. Is this a happy tale, an opportunistic one, or both? It reminds me a bit of this piece and how every interaction can be framed as a content opportunity in today’s digital landscape.

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Perhaps You Should…
Find Affordable Versions of Your Favorite Products

I deeply wish I had discovered this site before going on a self-conscious skincare shopping spree about a month back, but if you happen to be low on every product you own but fastidiously avoiding the re-purchase because buying all of your skincare at once feels like putting a downpayment on a home, you’re in luck! This handy tool scans the ingredient lists of your favorite products and shows you others that are comparable, including a 1-100 percentage score of how well they match to your desired product. I already have a list of more affordable alternatives for my next skincare haul!

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**Bonus Content** (For the Readers)

I loved reading this comments section of one of my favorite OG bloggers, Joanna Goddard’s, post, in which she asks a simple question: what are your top 3 books? I’ve gone through the 1,276 comments and added several titles to my “to read” list, and it got me thinking about my own top 3. As of now, they are 1. The Giver by Lois Lowry (because it is the first book I read that made me think about what an alternate version of society might look like), 2. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (for the complicated, crystal clear characters and the inspection of how personal trauma affects the way we value ourselves), and 3. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpha Lahiri (for a collection of stories that made me laugh, cry, and feel recognized in a set of characters who do not look like me).

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A Quote From A Book You Should Read:

“This life, drawn carefully across the other, former life. He does not think of it. Turns his mind from it entirely. They are again as strangers might be, faces fleetingly familiar in a great sea of faces. It’s the kindest thing he can do for himself and for them. There can only ever be a tenuous claim on the lives of others.”

-Real Life by Brandon Taylor

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This newsletter is best served with a side of conversation, so drop your opinions, reflections, and thoughts in the comments below and let’s get to talking.

Or, share the most thought-provoking piece from today’s edition with someone you love, then call them up to discuss, debate, and percolate. As a wise woman once said, “Great minds discuss ideas.”