essay about conversation with myself

Italy, 1952. Photo ©Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum

To converse well

A good conversation bridges the distances between people and imbues life with pleasure and a sense of discovery.

by Paula Marantz Cohen + BIO

Good conversation mixes opinions, feelings, facts and ideas in an improvisational exchange with one or more individuals in an atmosphere of goodwill. It inspires mutual insight, respect and, most of all, joy. It is a way of relaxing the mind, opening the heart and connecting, authentically, with others. To converse well is surprising, humanising and fun.

Above is my definition of an activity central to my wellbeing. I trace my penchant for good conversation to my family of origin. My parents were loud and opinionated people who interrupted and quarrelled boisterously with each other. I realise that such an environment could give rise to taciturn children who seek quiet above all else. But, for me, this atmosphere was stimulating and joyful. It made my childhood home a place I loved to be.

The bright, ongoing talk that pervaded my growing up was overseen by my mother, a woman of great charm and energy. She was the maestro of the dinner table, unfailingly entertaining and fun. We loved to listen to her tell stories about what happened to her at work. She was a high-school French teacher, a position that afforded a wealth of anecdotes about her students’ misbehaviour, eccentric wardrobe choices, and mistakes in the conjugation of verbs. There were also the intrigues among her colleagues – how I loved being privy to my teachers’ peccadillos and romantic misadventures, an experience that sowed a lifelong scepticism of authority. My mother had the gift of making even the smallest detail of her day vivid and amusing.

My father, by contrast, was a very different kind of talker. A scientist by training and vocation, he had a logical, detached sort of mind, and he liked to discuss ideas. He had theories about things: why people believed in God, the role of advertising in modern life, why women liked jewellery, and so on. I recall how he would clear his throat as a prelude to launching into a new idea: ‘I’ve been thinking about why we eat foods like oysters and lobster, which aren’t very appealing. There must be an evolutionary aspect to why we have learned to like these things.’ Being included in the development of an idea with my father was a deeply bonding experience. The idea of ideas became enormously appealing as a result. And though my father was not an emotional person – and, indeed, because he was not – I associated ideas with our relationship, and they became imbued with feeling.

Perhaps my family was exceptional in its love of conversation, but all families are, to some extent, learning spaces for how to talk. This is the paradox of growing up. Language is learned in the family; it solidifies our place within it, but it also allows us to move beyond it, giving us the tools to widen our experience with people very different from ourselves.

My family inculcated in me a life-long love of conversation – of sprightly, sometimes contentious, but always interesting talk that allowed me to lose myself for the space of that engagement. My pleasure in conversation has led me to think about the activity at length, from both a psychological and philosophical perspective: what makes a good conversation? What role has conversation served in history? What does talk do for us, and how can it ameliorate aspects of our current, divided society, if pursued with vigour and goodwill?

S igmund Freud began his groundbreaking work as the father of psychoanalysis by postulating that his patients’ symptoms were physical responses to traumatic events or taboo desires dating from childhood. He found that if these people could be encouraged to talk without inhibition – to free-associate on what they were feeling – they would eventually find the source of their problems and the cure for what ailed them. With this in view, he made talk central to his therapeutic method – hence, the ‘talking cure’.

Although many of Freud’s theories have since been refuted, the talking cure has endured. Clinical psychologists still recommend talk therapy as a treatment for both generalised anxiety as well as more severe mental health issues. And though Freud’s talking cure is not, by any stretch, a real conversation – the patient talks, the analyst listens and strategically intervenes – the phrase ‘talking cure’ strikes me as a useful one in referring to the nature and use of conversation in our lives.

The need for conversation is one that many people have not fully acknowledged, perhaps because they have not had occasion to do enough of it or to do it well. I am not suggesting that, in conversing, we serve as each other’s therapists, but I do believe that good talk, when carried on with the right degree of openness, can not only be a great pleasure but also do us a great deal of good, both individually and collectively as members of society.

For me, one particularly useful concept derived from Freud’s talking cure is the idea of transference . In the course of therapy, Freud found that some patients felt that they had fallen in love with their therapists. Since he believed that all love relationships recapitulate what occurs within one’s family of origin, he saw these patients’ infatuation as a repetition of earlier, intense feelings for a parent that could now be analysed and controlled – directed toward more productive and transparent ends.

A relationship can be over once consummated in sex. But friendships are never over after a good conversation

I think this idea is relevant to our understanding of conversation as an important activity in connecting with others. Putting aside the familial baggage that Freud saw as accompanying transference, a deep sense of affection seems to be, always, part of good conversation. Surely readers can identify with that welling up of positive feeling – that almost-falling-in-love with someone that we engage with in an authentic way. I have felt this not only for friends and even strangers with whom I’ve had probing conversations but also for whole classes of students where it can seem that the group has merged into one deeply lovable and loving body.

If love can be understood as important in conversation, so can desire, another element central to Freud’s thought. Sexual desire has its consummation in the sex act (a form of closure that accounts for why a poet like John Donne, among others, used ‘death’ to refer to sexual climax). Conversation, by contrast, does not consummate; it merely stops by arbitrary necessity. One may have to get across town for a meeting, pick up a child from school, or generally get on with the business of life. Such endings are in medias res , so to speak, or mid-narrative. I find it interesting that a relationship can sometimes be over once the partners have consummated it in sex. But friendships are never over after a good conversation; they are sustained and bolstered by it.

The search for satisfaction by our desiring self seems to me at the heart of good conversation. We seek to fill the lack in ourselves by engaging with someone who is Other – who comes from another position, another background, another set of experiences. Everyone, when taken in a certain light, is an Other by virtue, if nothing else, of having different DNA. To recognise this difference and welcome it is the premise upon which good conversation is built.

Conversation also helps us deal with the human fear of the unexpected and the changeable. Talk with others allows us to practise uncertainty and open-endedness in a safe environment. It offers exercise in extemporaneity and experiment; it de converts us from rigid and established forms of belief. There is no better antidote for certainty than ongoing conversation with a friend who disagrees .

G ood conversation is an art that can be perfected, and the best way to do this is to converse regularly with a variety of people. As the fat man says to Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon (1930): ‘Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice.’

The next best thing to practising conversation is reading those authors whose writing seems to channel the spirit of good conversation or give insight into its mechanics.

‘How can life be worth living … which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual good will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have someone to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as yourself’? wrote the lawyer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, who lived in ancient Rome in the 1st century BCE.

Expanding on the subject hundreds of years later, in the 16th century, was Michel de Montaigne , whose pioneering work in the personal essay form is, in its intimate and meandering style, a tribute to his love of conversation . ‘[I]f I were now compelled to choose,’ he writes in the essay ‘On the Art of Conversation’, which addresses the subject directly, ‘I should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight, than my hearing and speech’. One feels the pathos of this statement, given that Montaigne lost his most cherished friend, Étienne de la Boétie, at an early age and never ceased to mourn that loss. Indeed, some feel that the loss of La Boétie, by depriving Montaigne of his companion in conversation, accounts for the Essays , written to fill that void.

The 18th century was a great age of conversation; Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, David Hume , Joseph Addison and Henry Fielding are among the venerable authors of the period to provide commentary on what they considered to be important for good talk. The Literary Club in London, frequented by many of these luminaries, is said to have been organised in 1764 to help Johnson from succumbing to depression – through conversation, among other things.

Conversation was one of the activities that an aspiring gentleman was expected to learn

The book The Words That Made Us (2021) by Akhil Reed Amar, on the founders of the American Republic, makes the point that the American Revolution was successful in mobilising disparate people to its cause as a result of long and probing conversations among constituents across the colonies. The British were fated to lose the war, Amar argues, because George III refused to listen, let alone converse with his American subjects.

In the 19th century, especially in the United States where shaping the self alongside shaping the country became something of a national obsession, conversation was one of the activities that an aspiring gentleman was expected to learn. We see publication of numerous etiquette books during this period, with titles like Manners for Men (1897); The Gentleman’s Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness (1860); and Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society: With a Glance at Bad Habits (1834) – all of which give guidance on conversation, though mostly of a utilitarian kind.

In the 20th century, the most notable figure in conversational self-help was Dale Carnegie, who created an entire industry out of teaching aspiring social and business climbers based on his most famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). Carnegie began writing and giving courses in the 1910s, and his business survived him to grow into an empire (‘over 200 offices in 86 countries’, according to Forbes magazine in 2020) with supporting textbooks, online resources, newsletters and blogs that boast the tag line: ‘Training options that transform your impact.’ The message dovetails with the US myth of upward mobility and getting ahead. Carnegie’s self-improvement programmes have an offshoot in the self-realisation movements of the past few decades. A deluge of books in recent years link conversational skills to creative and relationship goals.

Having surveyed the abundant literature on conversation over the past two centuries, I find myself particularly charmed by a short but entertaining work, The Art of Conversation (1936) by Milton Wright. The book is full of citations from philosophy and literature, with thumbnail sketches of the ancient symposia and the ‘talkers of Old England’ while also exhaustively outlining conversational scenarios. In one case, the author describes a wife explaining to her husband how he should converse over dinner with his boss about his love of fishing and pipe smoking (Wright gives a verbatim account of the wife practising the conversation in advance of the dinner). In a chapter on ‘developing repartee’, Wright gives minute instruction on how to come up with a clever thought and insert it into conversation, advising:

It must be prompt. It must seem impromptu. It must be based upon the same premise that called it forth. It must outshine the original remark.

The author advises practising imaginary scenarios so as not to suffer l’esprit d’escalier (carefully defined for the reader: ‘you think of the scintillating remarks you could have made back there if only you had thought of them’). The book has sections on using flattery, seeking an opinion, and how to ‘let him parade his talents’.

The book’s erudition combined with its unadorned acknowledgment of human vanity is charming. It is perhaps no coincidence that Wright reminds me of Baldassare Castiglione and Niccolò Machiavelli in his tone; they too were writing at a high point of their civilisation, were both astute about human nature but optimistic about how the individual could rise through deliberate study and strategy. And yet, even as Wright explains the levers by which one can manipulate others to become a ‘successful’ conversationalist, he ends on a surprisingly moving note that undercuts his own lessons: ‘If … you can forget yourself, then you have learned the innermost secret of the art of good conversation. All the rest is a matter of technique.’

I love this book for its unabashed willingness to put forward this contradiction. One can make one’s conversation better by following certain instructions about listening well and employing choice opening gambits, transitions and techniques for putting one’s partner at ease; one may even practise ‘repartee’. But the secret to conversation, that of forgetting oneself, cannot be taught. It is akin to the double bind that psychologists refer to when someone tells us to ‘be spontaneous’. The admonition goes against the grain of what is involved: a state of being that happens by being swept up in the ‘flow’ of the moment.

I deally, one would want to converse with someone who is open and trusting, curious and good with words. But this is not always the case, and it often takes ingenuity and persistence to jump-start a good conversation . It is also a mistake to write off others simply because they don’t share your politics, religion or superficial values. While it is true that partisanship has become more pronounced in recent years, I don’t think this is irreparable.

Probing and spirited engagement can break apart ossified patterns of thought and bring to bear a more generous and flexible view of things. I have experienced the exhilaration of having an insight in the course of a conversation that didn’t fit with my pre-existing ideas, and of connecting with someone I might otherwise have written off. Most of us fear talking about important subjects with people we know disagree with us, much like we fear talking to people about the untimely death of a loved one. And yet these conversations are often, secretly, what both parties crave.

We discover new elements in our nature as we converse

Finally, there is the creative pleasure of conversation. If writing and speechifying can be equated with sculpture (where one models something through words in solitary space), conversation is more like those team sports where the game proceeds within certain parameters but is unpredictable and reliant on one’s ability to coordinate with another person or persons. Words in conversation can be arranged in infinite ways, but they wait on the response of a partner or partners, making this an improvisational experience partially defined by others and requiring extreme attentiveness to what they say. Also, like sport, conversation requires some degree of practice to do well. The more one converses – and with a variety of people – the better one gets at it and the more pleasure it is likely to bring.

Since conversation is, by definition, improvisational, it is always bringing to the fore new or unforeseen aspects of oneself to fit or counter or complement what the other is saying. In this way, we discover new elements in our nature as we converse. Over time, we incorporate aspects of others into ourselves as well.

One could say that in the flow of conversation the distance between self and Other is temporarily bridged – much as happens in a love relationship. It is sometimes hard to recall who said what when a conversation truly works – even when people are very different and stand ostensibly on different sides of issues.

Conversation is both a function of and a metaphor for our life in the world, always seeking to fulfil a need that is never fulfilled but whose quest gives piquancy and satisfaction, albeit temporarily and incompletely, to our encounters. In good conversation, there is always something left out, unplumbed and unresolved, which is why we seek more of it.

Adapted, in part, from Talking Cure: An Essay on the Civilizing Power of Conversation by Paula Marantz Cohen, published by Princeton University Press, 2023.

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Student Opinion

Do You Talk to Yourself?

Do you ever mumble to yourself when you’re alone? Or have lively conversations in front of the mirror?

By Michael Gonchar

Does everyone talk to themselves when no one is watching? Do you?

When we asked students this question a few years ago, Hailaria wrote: “I talk to myself a lot. Sometimes I do it when I don’t even realize it. Talking to yourself I think can be beneficial. For example, I practice conversation with myself, I even have arguments with myself. It helps me relieve stress.”

And Dan commented, “I talk to myself almost every day. I think that talking to myself helps me comprehend learning material better and also help me complete certain activities such as grocery shopping, cleaning, typing on a computer, and doing homework.”

But in the Times essay “ The Power of Talking to Yourself ,” the writer Paul McAdory cautions, “Like many normal behaviors, it’s also weird if the wrong person observes it, especially when you’re young.” He writes about his own experience with talking to himself, as a child and an adult:

Trembling in bed at night, my blankets pulled tight over my head save for an opening I left my face, I would whisper my troubles to my closest confidant: Wall. Wall was the wall nearest my childhood bed and, other than the occasional stray bang or muffled skittering, a nonverbal communicator. That didn’t stop me from hearing and heeding his counsel. Nor did his cheap facade — brownish faux-wood paneling littered with stickers — temper my belief in his tender depths. Wall was a boy like me, but calmer, cooler, more reflective. He listened to me, debated me, grasped the ends of sentences I didn’t finish. Off him I could bounce ideas as well as balls until sleep finally conquered fright. I no longer speak to Wall or to any of his relations: Laces, Ceiling, cantankerous Floor. We seem to have forgotten how to communicate with one another. Besides, we hardly see each other anymore. Instead, I speak aloud to myself. At the museum where I work, I enumerate the day’s tasks and the tools they require: drill, star bit, mag tip, level . In the supermarket, I interrogate my mental shopping list and disparage myself for its illegibility: We need, um … noodles? Eggs? Do we? (Expletive.) I’ve become what I always was: my own Wall. Psychologists call what I do “external self-talk” to differentiate it from regular self-talk, otherwise known as one’s internal monologue or dialogue. Plenty of people do it — just watch a tennis match if you don’t believe me. It’s viewed as normal within certain bounds, even beneficial, though speaker discretion is advised. Like many normal behaviors, it’s also weird if the wrong person observes it, especially when you’re young.

Students, read the entire essay, then tell us:

Do you ever talk to yourself? Is it something you do often, or just on rare occasions — like when you’re under stress?

Like Hailaria and Dan, do you find that talking to yourself can be beneficial? Why?

Mr. McAdory explains the difference between external self-talk and one’s internal monologue: “Psychologists call what I do ‘external self-talk’ to differentiate it from regular self-talk, otherwise known as one’s internal monologue or dialogue.” To what extent do you talk out loud to yourself as opposed to hold conversations with yourself in your head?

He also explains why talking to himself is different than talking with his friends: “I have found that vocalized self-analysis, and the willingness to trudge through intellectual and moral quandaries in noisy solitude, is a valuable complement to more traditional conversational outlets, especially when it comes to creative thinking.” Do you agree? Are there benefits you get from talking to yourself that you can’t get from conversations with other people?

After reading the essay, do you have a different perspective on “external self-talk”? Why, or why not?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

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A Dialogue with Yourself: Past, Present, and Future

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When the world—inner or outer—seems upside-down, journaling is often what saves me ( here’s a real example ).

My girlfriend recently found a gem in “ The Isolation Journals ,” a project by Suleika Jaouad ( @suleikajaouad ) intended to be “a 30-day creativity project to help make sense of challenging times.” Each day for 30 days, you receive a journaling prompt from some of Suleika’s favorite writers, artists, and musicians.

Below is a sample from Rachel Cargle ( @rachel.cargle ) that I simply loved. You can sign up here , and you can find past prompts here . Full disclaimer: I don’t know Suleika at all, nor her future plans, but I think this 30-day project is a wonderful way to stay and feel connected… both with others and yourself.

Both Suleika and Rachel have given me permission to share the below.

Enter Rachel Cargle

Lately, I’ve found comfort in appreciating the various versions of myself thus far. That younger me who was brave enough to make the big move to the city. Child me who opened her heart to curiosity and found hobbies that I still indulge in today. Teenage me who was scared often and instead of pushing myself into discomfort I cared for myself with a confident “no” to things I preferred not to be a part of. That version of me just a few years ago who found little morsels of joy even in the midst of what felt like the biggest storm.

I smile and look at her (those younger versions of me) with my mind’s eye. I hug her, I dance with her, I tell her I am proud of her, I forgive her for the things she was pitting against herself, I let her in on secrets about her future that she can only imagine.

I also have been indulging in the practice of praying to future versions of myself. The version of myself next year who will be fresh off of surviving a global pandemic. The version of myself who is 40 and will be benefiting from the choices I’m making now. The version of myself who is 50 and taking stock of how I’ve been existing in this world. The version of myself who is 70 who may be celebrating deeply in the friendships I am investing in now.

I pray to those versions of me. I ask her to be gentle with me, I coax her for hints on what’s to come, I list for her all the ways I am caring for her, right now—with that expensive face cream, through weekly therapy, by taking a few risks in business. I make promises to her, I speak my desires for her. I get energized and inspired knowing that she—that sage and grounded version of me—is waiting to meet me finally.

Take some time to reflect on all versions of yourself. This is a deeply intimate and revealing practice that can offer healing, insight, and hope.

Your prompt for the day: Write a letter to your younger self. Thank them, praise them, scold them, comfort them—engage in whatever way you feel led with one or many versions of your younger self. Whatever comes to mind.

Now, let’s shift to exploring your older self. What would you want to say? To ask? To request? Tell your older self what you are doing now in service of them. Tell them what the ideal situation might look like when you finally meet—where might you be living, what type of work might you be doing, who you might be spending time and space with.

Quick afterword from Tim: Here’s one more related prompt that I regularly use myself: “Imagine that you’re suddenly the older version of you — 5, 10, or 15 years in the future. If you sat down over wine or coffee with the current, younger you, what advice or observations might you offer?”

Related and Recommended

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than one billion downloads. It has been selected for "Best of Apple Podcasts" three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it's been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page .

The Most Important Conversations You’ll Ever Have Are With Yourself

The way you talk to yourself, your inner conversation, determines how you feel on a consistent basis, so it largely determines the quality of your life. Be mindful of that inner conversation.

From the book “ The Art of Talking To Yourself ” Get it now on Amazon. Speaker: Vironika Tugaleva

Transcript – The Most Important Conversations You’ll Ever Have Are With Yourself (Inspiring Speech) – (Motivational Speech)

Whether or not you’ve been paying attention to it, you—like every other human being—move through each day leading on a cease- less inner conversation. You talk to yourself about what is happening and what it means. You relate today’s events to yesterday’s struggles and tomorrow’s possibilities.  You define your character and decide which roles you’ll play with others.

You judge some parts of your experience as favourable and others as unacceptable. You decide what to fix and what to leave alone. You give meaning to each dream, each longing, each discomfort. You formulate ideas about what happens inside other people’s heads.

Your inner conversation is more than the sum total of thoughts that roll around in your head from day to day. It is the relationship you have with yourself and how that relationship connects you to the rest of existence. It is the lens through which you perceive reality. Thus, it defines the world you think you live in—a place that might be radically different from the real world.

How you talk to yourself decides how you feel about yourself and others.   It influences the choices you make about big and little things. It determines the actions you consider essential and the ones you consider dangerous, the desires you honour and the ones you repress, the plans you make for days to come and the lessons you learn from days gone.   Your inner conversation decides the quality of each moment in your life; and beyond the quality of each moment, what else is there? What else matters?

Despite its value, many of us neglect our inner discourse. We seek the answers to our problems outside ourselves. We buy into the tempting idea that better life circumstances will bring us happiness. How could we not? After all, this message is plastered on our billboards, written into our movie scripts, and woven into our advertisements.  Hypnotized by modern-day consumerism, we miss the obvious gaps in such logic. We all know people who seem to have everything but appreciate nothing. And for every imaginable misfortune, we can find examples of people who have blossomed from it. One person loses an arm and falls into alcoholism, shame, and despair. Another person loses an arm and becomes a world-renowned Paralympian. This difference is not inherent within the people or the situation. It is a consequence of how each person translates the meaning of losing an arm. How they respond to life’s events comes down to what they tell themselves happened.

We seek fulfillment in money, accomplishment, approval, status. We seek it in other people. One particularly harmful idea carried by our cultural narrative is that you need to find someone who will love you. Imagine if we believed this about any other basic need: food, water, oxygen. If you needed another person to provide you with those, you’d be considered dependent—if not disabled. Yet we so willingly put ourselves in this state with love.

If someone else notices our qualities and talents, we think those parts of us must be worthwhile. Our potential floats like an island in the sea—uncharted, unexplored. We long for someone to discover us, admire us, colonize us. But why must it be another person? Why can’t you sail that voyage and explore yourself?

We tend to believe that once we get the right attitude, the right habits, the right belief systems, everything will be perfect. We place happiness into the hands of some future event, and we use ourselves to reach it. We think we’re looking within, but we’re still dabbling near the surface: objectifying ourselves and then becoming frustrated when those objects do not bend to our will.

Our ideas about what lies within us keep us from open-minded self-exploration. Our unmasked selves do not look as we think they should, so we try our best to keep them out of sight. We hide from others, and we hide from ourselves.  We neglect the gold mines of potential within us because we’re too busy trying to make ourselves perfect. We overlook our deepest possibilities while we search for joy in shallow waters. But no amount of money, accomplishment, or romance will bring you joy until you learn to talk to yourself about joy (or until you stop talking your-self out of it).

To journey into your inner conversation, you must go deeper than you have ever gone before. Any of us can notice negative self-talk patterns or note the stories we make up about other people, but changing these patterns is possible only for those who see the whole picture. The inner conversation is like a forest. You might read a book about gathering tree sap or avoiding poisonous snakes, and that might be helpful. But when you get out there, the wilderness will not contort itself to match your knowledge about it. It will be as it is. Therefore, you must do the contorting.

Here, we meet self-awareness. When I use this term, I am referring to the practice of trying to observe yourself as you are and not just how you imagine yourself to be. If you do not call this self-awareness, that is all right. If this is not how you define self-awareness, that is all right too. You are entitled to your definitions. I am not here to change them. I am here to communicate something to you. You can embrace my definitions without surrendering yours. Words, after all, have no inherent meaning.

Awareness is a process of seeking truth. The inner conversation is the place we’re going to explore. A truth seeker needs both: to know how to look and where to look.

Without self-awareness, you can only go so deep into your inner conversation. You can only hear so much. You can only change so much. A person who doesn’t understand flowers might tug on them to make them grow. A person who doesn’t speak the language of someplace might misread the locals’ sentiments and intentions. Yet you are already such a flower, and your inner locals—your emotions, your body, your thoughts—are already speaking to you. If you don’t learn the language of your experience, then how can you understand yourself? How can you help yourself?

Everything you need for your adventure is already within you. Look. Look within—not with an agenda but with curiosity. Look with love. Think of how you do this to others. When you love people, you are curious about who they are, what they think, and how they feel. You watch them closely, wondering about their experience and what you can do to make it more enjoyable. You feel compassion for their pain and seek to make it more bearable. You are eager to learn the unique language of their existence. You want to understand them, inspire them, heal them. What if you could look at yourself this way?

The curiosity with which you ponder the people you love assumes that they’re worth exploring. Do you presume the same about yourself? Do you know how many undiscovered riches there are in your experience?   Throughout your life, you have embraced some things, and you have abandoned others. You have been assertive, and you have been calm. You have listened, and you have spoken. So you already know how to hold on, let go, speak up, shut up, light up, and calm down. You don’t need any- one to tell you what to do. You can figure that out for yourself—if only you can unleash your wild curiosity about the mysteries within you.

Only you can allow yourself to explore the person in the mirror. Only you can coax yourself into a daring adventure to find your untapped potential. After all, who can see inside the deepest recesses of your imagination and manifest those wishes into your daily experience?  Who can appreciate the subtle nuances of character you’ve acquired by overcoming your deepest fears? Who can acknowledge the demons that are no longer controlling you because of the work you’ve done to release them? Who can see the strength left behind in the wake of your toughest struggles? Who will see you for who you are—appreciating everything that is there, everything that is not, and everything that can be—if you do not? Who else can?

Your inner conversation is bursting with information. Learning to harness it will help you become an active participant in the creation of your life.  You don’t need to wait for someone else to notice your talents before nourishing them. You don’t need others to accept you to feel accepted. You don’t need to wait.

You can begin, at any moment, to work on noticing, nourishing, and accepting yourself. You can work on being a better friend to your reflection. You can start listening to yourself like you wish other people would. You can become curious about who you are. You can begin to learn the language of your mind and body so that you can decode it, understand it, speak it. You can work on understanding yourself instead of always trying to make yourself into someone else.

Self-understanding is a lifetime endeavour. It is not a week- end seminar. It does not come in capsule form. Every moment is ripe with opportunities to understand yourself better. Yet the moment is empty-handed. You are the source. The potential for awareness exists in every moment because it exists, first and foremost, inside you.

Schools & departments

In conversation with self

Some people might find it easier to think reflections through in their heads or while thinking out loud.

Reflection can feel like getting lost in your own thoughts – it just has to be conscious or purposeful

Most of us are familiar with getting lost in thoughts and for instance thinking through an event in our mind, looking at things we liked, did not like, want to do again, and what we want to happen differently in the future. This is very close to reflection, but it might not actually be reflection.

When getting lost in thought, it is often the case that we are not actually aware that we are doing it – and often we are not thinking about what our conclusion means and we fail to put them in context or we forget. Therefore to ensure that the experience of getting lost in thoughts definitely transforms into reflection you need to be conscious about when you want to do/are doing it, and do it purposefully. Think of it as a debrief of the event or the problem you are mulling over with the purpose of not just thinking about or solving it, but also with the intent to learn and generalise from it.

Typical ways of reflecting in conversation with yourself

Sometimes you might want to formalise your private reflections by capturing them, such that you can revisit them or present them to others. Revisiting allows you to create more in-depth reflections by taking a bird’s-eye view on the situation and respond with different ideas and conclusions than at the original time.

It can be valuable to record yourself and use the recording as a basis for a written reflection. If you want to you can get feedback on your reflections, or if you are ever required to provide you reflections for others, for example in a course, your recording might be a possible way to hand it in. If a submission is required by a course or other initiative, make sure that you are aware of what the requirements are and follow those, both in terms of content and structure.

Back to ‘Ways of reflecting’

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School Education /

Essay on Myself: 100 Words, 250 Words and 300 Words

Updated on
Mar 12, 2024

Every Individual is different from each other and it is important to self-analyze and know about yourself. Only you can know everything about yourself. But, when it comes to describing yourself in front of others many students fail to do so. This happens due to the confusion generated by a student’s mind regarding what things to include in their description. This confusion never arises when someone is told to give any opinion about others. This blog will help students and children resolve the confusion and it also includes an essay on myself.

While writing an “essay on myself” you should have a unique style so that the reader would engage in your essay. It’s important to induce the urge to know about you in the reader then only you can perform well in your class. I would suggest you include your qualities, strengths, achievements, interests, and passion in your essay. Continue Reading for Essays on myself for children and students!

Quick Read: Speech on Earth Day

This Blog Includes:

Long and short essay on myself for students, tips to write essay on myself, 100 words essay on myself, 250 words essay on myself, 10 lines on myself essay for children, 300 words essay on myself.

Quick Read: English Essay Topics

Mentioned below are essays on myself with variable word limits. You can choose the essay that you want to present in your class. These essays are drafted in simple language so that school students can easily understand. In addition, the main point to remember while writing an essay on myself is to be honest. Your honesty will help you connect with the reader.

Tell me about yourself is also one of the most important questions asked in the interview process. Therefore, this blog is very helpful for people who want to learn about how to write an essay on myself.

Given below are some tips to write an essay on myself:

Prepare a basic outline of what to include in the essay about yourself.
Stick to the structure to maintain fluency.
Be honest to build a connection with the reader.
Use simple language.
Try to include a crisp and clear conclusion.

I am a dedicated person with an urge to learn and grow. My name is Rakul, and I feel life is a journey that leads to self-discovery. I belong to a middle-class family, my father is a handloom businessman, and my mother is a primary school teacher .

I have learned punctuality and discipline are the two wheels that drive our life on a positive path. My mother is my role model. I am passionate about reading novels. When I was younger, my grandmother used to narrate stories about her life in the past and that has built my interest towards reading stories and novels related to history.

Overall I am an optimistic person who looks forward to life as a subject that teaches us values and ways to live for the upliftment of society.

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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Conversations with Myself Summary and Reviews

Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books

Conversations with Myself

by Nelson Mandela

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Published Oct 2010 448 pages Genre: Biography/Memoir Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela’s personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the post-apartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency - a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power. An intimate journey from Mandela’s first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice. While other books have recounted Mandela’s life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with Myself allows, for the first time, unhindered insight into the human side of the icon.

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Nelson mandela.

Nelson Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa, on July 18, 1918. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party’s apartheid policies after 1948. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island prison and then later moved to Pollsmoor prison, during which time his reputation as a potent symbol of resistance to apartheid grew steadily. Released from prison in 1990, Mandela received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was inaugurated as the first democratically elected president of South Africa in 1994. He is the author of the international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom .

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Conversations with myself

By nelson mandela , barack obama , and rosa maria borràs montané.

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Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself brings these documents into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power. (Bestseller)

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Published in, table of contents, edition notes.

"Foreword by President Barack Obama"--Cover.

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Think of Dreams as Conversations With Yourself

A dream series often offers repeating elements that reflect how the mind mulls..

Posted December 31, 2020

A dream is a conversation you have with yourself. Conversations are often extended events, so it should not be surprising that many dreams make a return appearance. In a previous post, titled "When Dreams Mix the Public and the Private," the dreamer returned to the same subject in a series of nightscapes that helped her choose a course of action.

For the last week, I’ve had lots of dreams: I am late, running to catch a bus and screaming for it to wait as it drives away and leaves me. Or I’m at a hotel resort, and I am running, trying to find who I am with and the room that I’m staying in. In another one, my dog is slipping off the leash and running away, and I’m chasing him throughout the city alone.

I had a fourth where I’m driving a speeding car and put my foot on the brake only to realize the car won’t stop. I’m about to crash when I wake up. Finally, this morning’s dream: I’m in a room with my ex-boyfriend Duke, the love of my life, who is an alcoholic, and Kevin, who I dated on the rebound for nine months. They are hooking up with my roommate right in front of me.

The Discussion

I asked, “Is Duke the boyfriend who was a heavy drinker? You broke up with him but decided to reunite after we analyzed your dream about the ballots, correct?”

Lucy revealed, “Yes. He ran away again once our relationship got good last week. I’m so in love with him and so heartbroken. It’s like he’s choosing alcohol over me.”

Turning to the feelings, I asked, “How do you feel in the dream, seeing them hook up with your friend?”

Lucy responded, “I felt anger . I was especially angry at the girl because she is my roommate! Truth be told, I actually don’t like her at all, and I wish she would move out.”

Looking for the mirror, I pursued, “You’re literally watching a cheat happen right in front of your face. What do you think you have in plain sight, right in front of you, that’s making you feel angry? Did something happen recently that made you feel this way?”

Lucy replied, “When Duke said he’s too afraid to continue our relationship, he also told me he hooked up with someone else. I’ve got this on my mind big time, and on top of it, my roommate has the virus.”

“Tell me a few things about her,” I requested.

Lucy offered, “Well, she’s bipolar, which I appreciate isn’t her fault, but it’s hard for me to live with. She’s always in her room and very often crying, always depressed or, conversely, extremely positive, and insanely happy. There’s no in-between with her, and it switches so frequently I admit it’s gotten right under my skin.”

Since Lucy started by describing several dreams, I observed, “Let’s review. There’s the dream where the bus that you couldn’t stop left without you. In a second dream, you’re trying to figure out who you’re with and where you’re staying. In the third, you describe yourself searching for your lost companion, and you finish that series in a speeding car, with no control over the brakes.

“All that makes me want to ask if you think your dreams are reflecting experiences in which you have no control? For example, both Duke and your roommate are dealing with a condition, Luke with alcoholism , and your roommate with bipolar disorder . You have no control over either of these people nor their personal issues or how they deal with them.”

“Right,” Lucy responded with some delightful sarcasm, “My roommate won’t go, though I want her to leave, and Duke bails, and I want him to stay!”

Reaching for the dream’s message, I inquired, “If you work this out with Duke, knowing that he has cheated on you and bails when the going gets rough, or as you say, ‘when the going gets good,’ do you really want to be with him long-term? What do you think you might be saying to yourself about engaging with both of these people in your life?”

Lucy responded, “That I hate my roommate, and she needs to go and that I wish Duke would love me and change for me, but really I need to let them both go !”

What We Can Learn

It is not uncommon for people to have a series of dreams. The repeating theme can reflect how your mind mulls over a problem for days, weeks, or even months. Look for the points in common: Do the dreams feature the same emotions or characters? Or, as in Lucy’s dreams, does a similar kind of action recur from one dream to the next? Such repetition can clue you in to your deeper feelings and perceptions about your situation.

Lucy’s dreams prodded her to acknowledge that she was keeping herself in a situation where she was not in control. She was attaching her happiness to someone else’s decision to change.

For Lucy, like the rest of us, since the only power we have is to change ourselves, we’re left to hopefully accept and respect each person for exactly where they are, with no expectation they will change. Lucy took back control of her own life by asking, “If this person stays exactly who he is, with no change, is he the man I want to spend my life with?”

Layne Dalfen, author of the Have a Great Dream books, established and runs The Dream Interpretation Center, founded in 1997, lectures at Concordia University in Montreal, and appears frequently on radio and television.

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How To Talk About Yourself (+ 12 Good Things To Say)

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people at conference talking to each other

“So, tell me about yourself…”

Is there a more dreaded question out there?

Other than your grandparents repeatedly asking if you’ve met anyone nice, that is!

It can be really hard to talk about yourself without accidentally sounding pretentious or arrogant, but you also don’t want to do yourself down.

Whether you’re in a job interview, on a first date, or meeting new people at a party, we’ve got some tips on how to master the ‘humble brag’…

1. Keep it short and snappy.

Interesting as you probably are, nobody expects an essay as a response.

While people are genuinely keen to find out more about you, they want to know the concise version of your personality… to start with, at least.

In an interview, for example, your answers should be snappy and to the point – most potential employers want to know that you can condense information down to the most important bits.

If you’re meeting new people, conversations tend to follow a certain pattern. Although there is so much more going on in your life, people generally want to know what your job is within three seconds of meeting you.

We know, we know – our jobs don’t define us, but they do help others make snap judgements, and that’s what a lot of introductory conversations are about.

By responding relatively speedily in this kind of situation, you’ll be able to identify a potential bond early on.

You can ask questions too, of course, meaning you’ve got a fast-track ticket to finding out a lot about each other in a short space of time.

After a few minutes of back-and-forth, you’ll both know if you want to carry on the conversation and get into more detail.

Think of it like speed-dating – you give lots of short, punchy titbits early on to interest and engage each other, and then decide whether to get a second drink and divulge more information.

Example – on a first date, mention where you live, what your job is, and one of your hobbies. These three punchy statements will probably answer the next few questions the other person had, and you’ll be on the way to establishing some common ground.

2. Be honest – you’ll appreciate this later, trust us!

There is no point lying or embellishing your interests or achievements.

Take our word for it.

From personal experience, there is nothing more excruciatingly painful than having your brand new boss ask about something you pretended to be really interested it…

…the results of last night’s game? Not a clue, but they’ll assume you know as you were so passionate about it in your interview.

Equally, saying that you can speak a foreign language when you can’t may look impressive on a CV, but will look pretty silly in a meeting when you struggle to remember your GCSE Spanish. Not a great move!

Remember that episode of Friends where Joey says he can speak French and tap dance? Didn’t work out so well. If you can down a gallon of milk in under a minute, though, go for it…

This works with friendships and relationships, too. It might feel good to agree with someone on a certain hobby or job role, but, by pretending, you’re putting yourself in a dangerous situation.

You’ll become so worried about slipping up and revealing that you told a white lie that you’ll stop enjoying any interactions with that person.

Try to remember that you’re great as you are and that you can be honest about what you do, as well as what you don’t do.

There’s nothing wrong with not agreeing with someone, and not every hobby is going to be shared. If you’re not interested in the same initial thing, keep going and find a different, common ground. There’ll be one in there somewhere!

Example – reveal a secret, interesting fact about yourself or just go for something genuine, like being able to speak a foreign language or touch-type. It might not seem thrilling to you, but it might just spark a great conversation.

3. Engage and respond (appropriately!)

If someone has mentioned that they enjoy something you also enjoy, this is a really easy way to talk about yourself without bragging.

It will help you engage the person you’re speaking with, they’ll be able to relate to you more, and the conversation will feel much more natural.

On a first date, for example, finding common ground can be a huge relief compared to those stretches of awkward silence.

By sharing your passion for something, you’ll appear way more ‘human’ and are likely to have a genuine connection.

If you’re in an interview, it’s always great for the employer to feel like they’d actually get on with you on a day-to-day basis.

We’re all capable of being professional when we need to, so the human touch is really important and shows that you’re an authentic, interesting person that they’ll actually talk to.

By responding and interacting more, you open yourself up as a person and come across as genuine, which can only ever be a good thing.

Make sure you’re appropriate in an interview, of course. Going out and drinking every weekend may be a hobby of yours, and of theirs(!), but you don’t need to bring that up.

Focus on your love of the French language, passion for rock-climbing, or weekly trip to the local library. Much safer.

Example – tell them that you also love going to farmers’ markets at the weekend and start a conversation about one you’ve been to locally. Who knows, you might even end up going to one together some day…

4. Be confident – or pretend to be!

You know yourself better than anyone, and you’re in a great position to present yourself in the best possible light.

Whether it’s an interview or a date, you’re starting with a blank slate, which means that all anyone will know about you is what you tell them and how you tell it.

Being confident is a challenge for a lot of people. Try to remind yourself that whoever you’re talking to doesn’t know you, so they won’t know that you’re actually shy and hate speaking to strangers.

If you pretend to be confident, they’ll just assume that you are. We know it’s not quite that easy, which is why we’d suggest that practice makes perfect.

Your loved ones will always be there to offer support, so why not run through a few mock interviews with them? The more you become used to talking about yourself in this way, the more genuine confidence will build up. It feels quite silly at first, but it’ll really pay off.

This whole article is about helping you feel comfortable and confident in talking about yourself. The fact that we’ve written it shows just how much of an issue it can be for a lot of us, so try to take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone.

Like we said – fake it till you make it. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you’ll settle into your new role as an outgoing individual and while it may not become second nature, you’ll be able to pull it off when required.

Example – don’t hold back, be bold with what you’re saying. Your loved ones are interested when you talk because they know you – those who don’t are interested because they want to know you, so try to remember that.

5. Accept potential judgement.

We’d love to tell you that nobody is judging you, but it may not be true. What we will tell you, however, is that it doesn’t matter.

Sure, people will make snap judgements , but there is no point in worrying what they might be. You just need to accept that this will happen and remind yourself that it’s not always a negative thing.

A snap judgement could be, “Wow, firm handshake!” or, “Oh okay, I love playing tennis as well, that’s great” – it doesn’t always need to be what the voice in your head is suggesting.

If you focus too much on what people may or may not be thinking, you’ll completely lose yourself and you’ll forget how to just be you .

Remember that whoever you’re talking to wants to find out more about you, whether it’s for a job or as a new friend. If they judge and they don’t like you , it’s just not the right match.

Remember that whatever happens, you’ll be fine – if you don’t get a job offer from that boss you felt was judging you, it’s for the best. Would you really want to work for someone who you felt was constantly looking down on you?

The guy you had a date with might have thought your hobbies were lame, so you’ve had a lucky escape by avoiding a second date. Things would never really work out if you have such differing opinions on things that matter so much to you.

If you try to start new interactions with this mindset, you’ll worry so much less about the outcome and be able to focus on just being your wonderful self. Odds are, everything will work out much better in the end anyway.

Example – say what you want and ignore your own anxiety around what others might think .

6. Prepare something in advance.

If you’re feeling nervous about any new interactions, planning is one of the best ways to eradicate those anxieties.

Write down a list of things of things you do at the moment – run through your daily routine and your weekend activities over the past few months. Think about the things you do and the things that you enjoy, and remember that these can be very different!

If you’re struggling, ask your loved ones what they think of when they think of you. This might help trigger some memories of what you’ve been up to. It can be really hard to remember our hobbies when we’re put on the spot, and recalling what we had for breakfast is hard enough some days!

Make another list of things you’d like to be doing with your life. This is probably quite different to what most of us actually do.

Talking about yourself doesn’t just need to be arbitrary facts about your everyday life. Someone’s future plans and interests can be really engaging, and it’s always nice to hear about the direction people are trying to steer their lives in.

Mentioning that you want to up and travel the world isn’t the best thing to say in a job interview, but it’ll spark off a great conversation with a date or new friend.

Talk about your wishes to join a dance club or start swimming again. These kinds of things might not be that interesting to you because you’re not actually doing them yet, but they’ll help give people more of an impression of your personality.

Someone who introduces themselves as a banker might not seem instantly fascinating, but their future goal to skydive across Australia? Pretty cool and definitely conversation-worthy.

By preparing yourself for this type of question, you’ll go into social situations feeling much more confident.

Example – mention what you did a few weekends ago – they don’t need to know that you’ve been planning your answer since then! You can talk about future plans, too, and run through a list you’ve already made of your life goals.

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7. Reverse the question.

If you feel like you need a few minutes to regroup after this kind of question, give a little bit of information and then put the question back to them.

It won’t come across as ‘weak’ and they won’t know that you’re partially doing it to deflect attention. You’ll come across as invested and genuinely interested in whatever the situation is.

If you’re on a date or meeting someone new, the other person will feel flattered that you’re paying them attention and seem to really care. You’ll also find out some new information about that person, which is always exciting.

In an interview, you’re allowed to ask questions! Just because you’re the one in the hot seat, doesn’t mean you can’t reverse the system and ask a few questions.

Make sure they’re relevant and appropriate (don’t ask about the salary!), but try to feel comfortable exploring a bit more. You’re more than entitled to ask more about the role, or about whoever your departmental manager will be.

Show that you’ve done your research by asking what the interviewer’s reaction to X or Y was – they’ll be impressed that you’re aware of what’s going on in their work-world and will appreciate the opportunity to bond.

It also shows that you’re interesting, switched on and want to be engaged in the business.

Example – ask them what they’re expecting from you as an employee or how they find working in the team.

8. Don’t be scared of talking yourself up…

There’s nothing wrong with being proud of yourself and your achievements.

Be careful with how you’re wording this kind of thing (we’ll go into that next!), but don’t feel as though you can’t celebrate yourself and your achievements.

In an interview, it’s good to talk about positive impacts you’ve had on businesses in the past. You’ll probably have written your achievements on your CV anyway; this is just giving you the opportunity to go into more detail and add a personality to the words.

If you’re meeting a new friend or potential date, it’s always good to be confident. Don’t be arrogant, of course, but feel free to talk positively about yourself. Stories are always so much more interesting when the person telling them is genuinely interested in what they’re saying!

Talk about the things you enjoy with passion – it will say a lot about you. Speak with pride about the things you’ve accomplished, as this shows that you have respect for yourself and understand your worth.

That’s such an important quality in many ways. People who shy away from celebrating their own successes may appear very insecure or unsure – this is obviously fine, but it may not be an accurate representation of your personality.

Try to work on speaking openly about the things you’re good at – you can practice on your loved ones as you know that they’ll be supportive of you and join in with talking you up!

Example – don’t hold back from opening up about some interesting and exciting things you’ve done. Interviews are a space for you to talk about your accomplishments so don’t shy away from talking about your successful moments!

9. …But don’t talk yourself up too much!

Making yourself sound like a great person (which you obviously are!) is absolutely fine. Going overboard and coming across as a bit brash? Not so great.

There’s a fine line between pride and arrogance, and we’ve got some tips on how to stay on the right side of that line.

If you’re in an interview, talking about your accomplishments is key. It’s really important to talk about times you’ve worked and performed really well, but make sure you’re telling the full story.

One of your biggest achievements may have been when you were working as part of a team. Don’t discredit this as an example just because it doesn’t reference you doing something alone! Doing things incredibly well while working alongside others is still doing things incredibly well.

Reference your co-workers where needed – taking solo credit for a group effort could very easily blow up in your face later on if it’s discovered that the work you did involved other people.

Being able to recognize your own efforts as well as your ability to work with others is great and employers really like hearing that people are versatile.

This may actually make you feel more comfortable in talking about yourself as well – you can reference your contributions within a team, so there’s less pressure to just talk solidly about yourself.

If you’re on a date or meeting new people, staying a little bit humble is probably a good idea, at least to start with.

Imagine how you’d feel if you met someone new and all they spoke about was how brilliant they are, how good at their job they are, and the expensive car they just bought themselves.

By all means, as we’ve suggested, be confident when sharing things about yourself, but remember that conversations go both ways.

Keep the other person involved by inviting opinion and asking questions back, not just talking yourself up the whole time!

You’ll find this kind of thing much easier the more you talk to new people, don’t worry – it’s not as tricky as it sounds.

Example – mention the team you’ve been working within when talking about work successes. This shows that you’re not selfish when it comes to taking credit for hard work, but that you also have self-respect and understand the importance of your contributions.

10. Keep it casual.

Even if you’ve planned out what you’re going to say to the nth degree, try to act casual.

It’s great that you’re prepared, but people may find it a bit strange if you seem to be reading from a mental script.

Going over what you want to say is great, as we’ve mentioned, but try to keep things loose and casual when you speak.

By the time your interaction (interview, date, party etc.) comes up, you’ll have been over your ideas so many times that they’ll feel like second nature. This means that you’ll know your ‘topic’ inside and out and the words will just flow.

Trust that this will happen and try to relax. If you’re already a naturally nervous person , this can be really tricky. Remind yourself that you’ve rehearsed, as it were, and you’re now ready to ad-lib based on your knowledge.

People will understand if you take a few moments to respond to a question, especially a big meaty one like this!

Interviewers will actually be expecting you to take a pause here. They’ll want you to be prepared but they won’t want it to feel thoroughly choreographed. Take it slowly, breathe and try and be as natural as you can.

Example – write yourself a script if you need to, then convert it to flashcards. That way, you’ll learn the key points rather than the order of words in a sentence. This will help you talk naturally and you’ll remember the prompts rather than reciting what you planned word for word!

11. Back yourself up.

If you’re going to an interview, some props can really work in your favor. Portfolios can be fantastic for a lot of jobs and statistics are a great way to back up what you’re saying about yourself.

If you’re talking about the clients you converted to sponsors, or the extra sales you achieved by working with another company, bring the figures to explain it.

Talking about yourself in this kind of sense can be quite tricky – no matter how convincing you are, a lot of people want to see some evidence to back it up. Saying that you’ve done things is a good start, but being able to prove it on paper (or laptop!) really packs a punch.

Make sure you’re fully prepared going into this kind of thing. You don’t want to give a presentation, but you do want to ensure you’ve got the right documents with you and that you’re on the right track.

Think of the best way to present your data and tailor that to the company you’re interviewing with. If you’re applying for a creative role, reflect that aspect of the job in your documents. If it’s more of a straight-laced company, go old-fashioned and show off a pie chart or graph.

Go over things with someone you trust before you go into the interview. They’ll be able to sense-check what you’re doing and point out any glaring errors you’re making.

They’ll give you a confidence boost and help you figure out the order you should present things in. The rest is down to you.

Example – your involvement in a company’s marketing campaign increased sales by X%, so show that off with a pie chart or, if it’s appropriate, creative infographic.

12. Be consistent.

This mainly applies to job interviews – keep what you’re saying relevant to your CV.

If you randomly remember something in your interview that you didn’t put on your CV, bringing it up is fine! But try to stick to what you’ve already submitted.

The interviewer was impressed enough with your CV to take you to interview, so they’ll want to hear more about what they’ve read there.

Run through your CV again a few times before any interview. This will remind you of the things that are on there and can help you remember why you included them.

Recalling dates can be tricky at times, especially when you’re feeling stressed or nervous. Being inconsistent with this type of thing will really stand out, however, and the panic you’ll then feel will be horrible.

If someone questions something on your CV, try to stay calm and run back through your mental notes. If you’re really stuck, try to make a joke about it or ask a question in return, like “Sorry, what do you mean by that?” or something to buy you time and help you clarify what it is you should be saying!

This really links in to everything we’ve been saying above and ties it all together. Be honest and you’ll be able to stick to the same story – because it’s true!

By planning beforehand, you’ll know exactly what you want to talk about and you’ll be talking the interviewer through your CV, essentially.

If the interaction is more casual, with a date or new friend, this still applies…

…you’ll instantly appear trustworthy if you’re consistent. People who are all over the place can come across as flaky or slightly suspicious.

We’re not saying that you have to stick to just one topic of conversation, however. Talk about yourself and the various things you’ve done with your life, but stay consistent to yourself.

Example – if you’ve written that you worked at your last job from 2013 – 2017, make sure this is what you’re saying. As soon as you deviate from something you previously wrote/ said, you give the interviewer a chance to doubt you.

So, now that we’ve run through these easy ways to talk about yourself, there’s just one thing left to do – practice!

You can read about it as much as humanly possible, but the steps aren’t going to make real sense unless you start putting them into motion.

Talking about yourself can feel very intimidating at first, even though you know yourself better than anyone else. The more you’re exposed to these types of interactions, the sooner you’ll find a way that works best for you so that can feel truly comfortable and confident.

About The Author

Lucy is a travel and wellness writer currently based in Gili Air, a tiny Indonesian island. After over a year of traveling, she’s settled in paradise and spends her days wandering around barefoot, practicing yoga and exploring new ways to work on her wellbeing.

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"Conversations with Myself" launch - a photo essay

November 1, 2010 – The official South African launch of Nelson Mandela’s new book Conversations with Myself was held at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg with acclaimed South African playwright and actor John Kani reading extracts from the book and leading a discussion between Mr Mandela’s close friend and anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, his youngest daughter Zindzi Mandela and his great-grandson Luvuyo Mandela.

Book cover: Nelson Mandela – Conversations with Myself

November 1, 2010 – The official South African launch of Nelson Mandela’s new book Conversations with Myself was held at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.

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Maggie Nelson on the Conversations She Wants to Be Having

By Lauren Michele Jackson

A portrait of Maggie Nelson sitting on a chair in a dark space.

We have a sense, I think, of the false border sequestering art from theory. And so to remark on Maggie Nelson’s facility in mating the two is to say the least about how she does so—which is with a hurtling gusto that nonetheless invites us to pause and think. For this, her books are beloved by audiences with varying attachments to the categories that are often, imperfectly, applied to what they are reading: “memoir,” “art criticism,” “poetry,” “queer theory,” “feminism.” This is one way of saying that describing Nelson’s writing can be harder than consuming it, as one of its defining features involves unfurling the shorthand that governs—literally and figuratively—so much of our lives, including the terms we use to identify ourselves.

Nelson was raised in Northern California and moved to New York after college. While there, in the nineties, she became immersed, academically and recreationally, in the rad ideation in literature, theory, and art of the times, and was guided by her daring predecessors: the poet and novelist Eileen Myles , the artist and writer Wayne Koestenbaum, and the critic and queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Her earliest books christened her a poet, but her writing soon demonstrated a sidewinding relation to that discipline. Her book “ Jane: A Murder ,” published in 2005, assembles all kinds of discursive material, making poetry out of the prosaic and vice versa, in telling the story of her aunt Jane, who was murdered as a young woman. This was the book with which, as my colleague Hilton Als wrote , in 2016, “Nelson went from being a versifier to being a writer who plays with prose and remakes the genre.” That play would be central to her 2015 title, “ The Argonauts ,” about her marriage to the gender-fluid artist Harry Dodge, whose hormone therapy and double mastectomy coincided with Nelson’s pregnancy. The book is about so much more as well: meditations, as in working out in thought, on pedagogy, dogma, ill-fitting idioms. Yet, much as Nelson commits to thinking a thing over from all sides, her voice is firm. “It’s easy to get juiced up about a concept like plurality or multiplicity and start complimenting everything as such,” Nelson writes, echoing Sedgwick and the philosopher Roland Barthes, after whose work the book takes its name. “This is an activity that demands an attentiveness—a relentlessness, even—whose very rigor tips it into ardor.”

As may be expected, then, the title for her recent eleventh book, “ Like Love: Essays and Conversations ,” yields something far more eclectic than its subtitle suggests. The pieces span nearly two decades, from the mid-two-thousands to last year, and each one is a two-hander of sorts, between Nelson and an artist or a work of art. There are lyrical and essayistic encounters with, for example, Kara Walker’s “Event Horizon” and the AIDS novel “ To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life ,” by Hervé Guibert. The conversations—with Moyra Davey, Jacqueline Rose, and Simone White, among others—are as varied as the respective ties between the interlocutors, who are in some cases meeting over video and in others exchanging long, digressive dialogue via e-mail. A reply from Björk is full of line breaks, such that each paragraph resembles a stanza of a poem:

maggie, i am craving so hard other narratives for us, is it just laziness or lack of imagination?

In a pair of recent conversations over Zoom, Nelson spoke with me about the performative aspect of writing, reading her old work, and becoming “lightly interested” in genre for the first time. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did this book come together?

Writing can be so solitary. And then this was something that you do where you get out of your head and you try and take on someone else’s. Immerse yourself in their issues and see where they match things that interest you.

I’ve been doing that for a long time, but it had occurred to me that a lot of those pieces were entombed and didn’t feel like they joined any of my wider work. I got excited about just looking at them, culling from many things on my computer. And then there are many more conversations than the ones I included here.

People have often talked about my work as being in conversation with other people, but I felt like these were literalizations of that. Even if you’re quoting and arguing or talking with other people on the page, it’s still just your symphony.

To cite is a conversation.

Whenever you’re quoting people to bolster or argue with, there’s always some degree of repurposing. It really felt exciting to me, as it does in life when people who you’re talking to don’t have your same focus, or see something differently, or maybe even say something and you’re, like, “Oh, I wouldn’t have said that.”

There’s something very tentative about speaking with another person.

There’s a dance you do with people when you’re talking, where you’re leading and following in the conversation. In the last piece with Eileen Myles, for example, there are a lot of “yeah”s and “right”s punctuating it. And there was some pressure, say, in an editorial process, to take those out, and some were taken out.

In your piece on Fred Moten’s essay collection “ Black and Blur ,” there’s this interesting gesture toward the beginning, where you’re, like, Well, I can’t call this a review, because there are certain professional structures and allergy to the kind of . . . “entanglement,” I believe is the word you used. The kind of interpersonal relationship that would preclude that genre of writing.

I respect the rules and norms set in place about people not knowing each other or whatnot. There are, as you’re well aware, all kinds of power dynamics and weird things that come in when it’s, like, this person must have absolutely nothing to do with this scene, whatever. You might get someone who has no clue about anything about queer culture being asked to weigh in on something really that was meant from queer culture to queer culture. You get these things. And I’m not really very interested in that, and never really have been. Especially with these essays on art, even if I didn’t know the person prior to having been commissioned or invited to write a piece, you do then know them and you spend time having them tell you about other ideas and looking at their sketches and watching their old movies.

We went through a moment in which the refrain was, Only somebody who is close to the representational content of the object is of an authority to write about it. And yet the essays in here seem to come alive in unmooring that identity match. Speaking of Hilton in your piece about him, you write that “it’s one thing to theorize the workings of identity and desire, as so many have done; it’s another to set those workings loose in language and let them rip. To give them mouths .” We’re all readers. We’re all quote-unquote consumers of art. How do we set those things loose without, of course, losing attention to the ethical imperative?

That is a really good question. I’d have to think about it, but I think one of my first responses might be just starting from the get-go, analyzing how you came to be writing about it in the first place. I know the process by which, in every case, I came to that person or subject or work. And I think, just with everything in life, not being overly aggressive or defensive but just being inquisitive about your position and what you’re working on and why.

People have a very different relationship to the way they conduct conversations, even conversations meant to be printed. They might not necessarily have the same sense of permanence about their words. How would you characterize your relationship to things that you’ve said in the past?

I have a more performative feeling about writing. I don’t feel like it’s setting things in stone. So I guess in some sense I don’t have a relationship with them. People always ask if I feel bad or weird or regretful or anything about earlier work, and I just really don’t have that set of feelings. Luckily, when I look back I wasn’t, to my ears, spouting anything too batshit crazy.

It’s just a condition of possibility for older conversations. Particularly in that first conversation with my friend [the poet] Brian Blanchfield, taking the temperature of how things felt around queer/trans stuff. And it was not lost on me that a lot of stuff sounded like a really different moment than where we find ourselves right now. I think it’s just you have to be willing to speak in the present.

I wanted to ask you about the title, which brings us back to Hilton, who writes of, as you quote, “mouths that need filling”—I’m not getting it exactly right—“with something like love.” And I was really caught by the alliterative symmetry of that, “like love.” I can imagine many homing in on the “love” as such a fraught and mobile term. But you are leaning in to the force of the simile and the questions that it raises. How did this figure of the simile help you think in this collection? In literature? In life?

I love Hilton’s writing because often I really don’t know what he means, and it’s very evocative. It becomes an invitation to be, like, What the hell does that mean—for something to “fill your mouth like love”? And it got me immediately thinking about [William Carlos] Williams’s famous quote that men die for lack of what’s found in poems. It’s a much more charged-up conversation than just, like, “Well, do we like love? Do we love?” I mean, “Do we like art? Do we love art?”

This question about nourishment—which obviously links to other conversations about the nature of art and survival and different communities in different times and places. In “On Freedom,” I perseverate in a different idiom about problematics of the word “care,” and it being applied in the realm of art. I don’t think caring about life and caring about art are necessarily two different things, but they’re not easily synonymous, either. And so I think that the title of the book holds that along with its positivity.

There’s a lot of ambient distaste for the idea of art as—you quote from Ben Lerner’s “ 10:04 ”—“stylized despair.” You also evoke, from Francis Bacon, this idea of “exhilarated despair.” How do you differentiate between stylized despair and exhilarated despair? Is one a more ethical relation to art than the other?

I am inclined to think of those things as moods or temperaments, which makes me hesitate before I would hang an ethics on them. If one person’s doing stylized despair and someone else is doing exhilarated despair and someone else is doing absolutely not despair, I think of them more as giving us the gifts of inhabiting those moods, such that we can visit with them and make our own determinations about how long we want to stay there or what they have to offer.

There may be people out there—clearly there are—who are wholly in it for the art of insistence. I often hear behind a lot of criticism this quiet hum, as if this is the only art or the best art. And then the reverse of that is there shouldn’t be this art. If I ever dip in either of those directions, I’m pretty worried about what I’m up to. I don’t just write about anything. If someone has me in their studio and I don’t connect, I’m not going to write about it. And, if I see something I don’t like, I really have no need to write about it. If you wanted to get into ethics, I think that there is an ethics in that active attention, but I wouldn’t ride that horse all the way around the ring.

I almost regret the word “ethics.” There’s something so dutiful, I think. Like, “Ah, yes. The ethics of critical attention.”

I really like the conversation with my old friend Simone White in this book. In that conversation, we’re really both asking: Before our good acts of attention get turned into moralism, what else is available while we’re just in the muck of it?

It’s also a way of chafing against the cohering, or maybe standardizing, effect of genre. I’m wondering how you’re thinking about genre now. I was really caught by this line from Eileen Myles about being “so sick of the public account of who I am.” You are someone whose public profile or literary profile is understood as somebody who does chafe against, or finds other routes into or between, genres. How do you think this book will end up figuring into that?

In the conversation with Eileen, we’re also talking about how, whatever moment that the public account begins, it just becomes more and more boring and more and more, in some ways, dissociated from the newness or curiosity you have to find to write anything.

I am sorry, I’m pausing because I’ve never had anything I feel like of interest to say about genre at all. But it’s something that people want to talk about all the time, and I always just feel like, “I just write the books.” To me, it’s like you’re clawing through, and you’re, like, “O.K. It looks like that? O.K.” I will say that, for the very, very first time in my entire life, I’m interested in genre. But it’s taken me this long, and I’m only lightly interested. This book, I feel like, to me it’s an in-joke with myself to have “essays” on the cover, because people have been calling me an essayist for years. And in my opinion I’ve never published any essays ever. I don’t think of any of my work as essays. I don’t have any precious feeling about that genre. That said, I don’t want to be a writer of bad sentences, and I want everything to be interesting. But it’s not like a bouquet of flowers, per se.

Where essays are going for the flower?

Essays can be a million different things. You can call your shopping list an essay. I think it’s just as Eileen would say in that last essay: it’s a shitty edifice. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.

Now I’m so bashful.

No. No. No. No.

I think it’s very scary not to have some sort of structuring framework by which to evaluate something. And yet I also think other people maybe find a lot of life in thinking of themselves in terms of genres.

That’s the thing. If you just want to work and make things look however you want, you have to get really used to people who are, like, “I picked this. I’m thinking it would be this. But it’s like this.” Or “I thought she wrote like this, but it’s like this.” And so what? Who cares? You’re hearing their edifice of what they’d hoped, their Platonic ideal of what they hoped that they were going to pick up. And I like it when I pick up something, I don’t know what it is, and then my head gets blown off. That’s my favorite reading experience. And then I’m left with a lot of bewilderment, like, “What was that?” But that’s not what everyone’s looking for.

In some ways, it’s the least interesting observation you could make about a thing that you just read: “I expected it to be something, and it was something else.”

I’m just not quite interested in policing a work or knowing beforehand what it is. I’m very interested in form or shape and structure. And sometimes they manifest with literary names, but not all the time.

I do feel like formalism is back in a big way. Do you get that sense, too?

I don’t know if you’re like this, too, since you’re a professor, but maybe you’re more serious than I am. I think probably you are. I look at things happening, and I keep a squinted eye on them so that I can know enough to know what my students are talking about, especially the ones in critical-Ph.D. land. But I squint enough so that I can expel them from the writing room when I need to just play. Because I think for most writers, whenever there is something that begins to seem like a trend, you’re just running for the next hill to take cover, find your new plot of land, where you’re going to see what can happen.

I would characterize myself as a very unserious professor, which is to say that half the time it’s a matter of vibes or something.

A vibes-based professorship.

Vibes-based professorship. It’s working so far.

I think students also get tortured a little bit by trends. They’re worried that their work might not be of the moment, and they’re worried their sensibility might not be welcome. I want them all to have a place. I want them all to do what their sensibility leads them to do as well as they can.

How do you feel about teaching now? How is it going for you?

I love teaching. I’ve taught for almost twenty-five years, and it’s just been a constant in my life. It’s a privileged window in which you get to stay in touch with what people, like, eighteen to, I don’t know, thirty-five, or what’s going on with them. In this book, it was really important to me to begin it with this conversation with Wayne Koestenbaum and end it with this conversation with Eileen Myles, to whom I dedicated the book. Because when I was a young person, very young, very young, they both showed me the way, and it was so important to me.

I wanted to take us back to the preface. There’s this quote from James Baldwin in the first paragraph: “All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.” At the risk of being a little too cute, I wanted to ask: What anguish, what language, are you vomiting up these days?

I loved waiting to see where you were going with talking about vomit and then saying you thought this was going to be too cute. I was, like, “What is cute about vomit?” I forgot that Baldwin says “artists,” when, in a way, I’m talking in this introduction about being a critic. I think, with Baldwin and with Hilton and other people, [Susan] Sontag , that distinction is blurred in the work, which is the work I admire most. Something could rise up, not just for the artist, as any personal anguish, but also for the critic who’s seen something that they want to tell you about.

The thing about what comes up is that you never know what’s going to come up. You don’t know what you’ve eaten yet. You don’t know what form it’s going to take. Not to beat this metaphor into the ground. If I’m taking things in or living like I am, things are rising up in me to say, and I don’t worry so much about when that will happen.

That’s as good of a description as any for engagement with art, having an aesthetic experience, being open to surprise and having things happen.

I wish I saw a lot more art. But I think that what I have lost in terms of a horizontal spreading I’ve gained in that I have the time and space to do deeper dives. You learn a lot with the deep dive, so it’s always worth taking the time.

Reading gets described as a very visceral experience in a lot of your work, and I’m wondering if it has always been that for you.

As opposed to?

I guess cerebral, to the extent that we want to entertain that distinction.

I mean, I think everything is. I feel like, when we read, we get distracted, we want to throw books across the room. We get tired. We get excited.

Your ideal reading experience is one that blows your head clean off. Have you had any of those experiences lately?

I’m teaching a class right now in criticism, and two books I really liked have been this Ian Penman book on [the German filmmaker Rainer Werner] Fassbinder and Chantal Akerman’s book “ My Mother Laughs .” That’s not about criticism, but I really thought that was terrific. Those were my two favorite books of the summer, and there’s a little book by David Kishik called “ Self Study: Notes on the Schizoid Condition ” that I thought was really terrific. Things can blow your head off for all different kinds of reasons.

Your work garners a great deal of marvel for the breadth and creativity of its citations. And yet you’ve expressed embarrassment about being treated as, in your words, “a big reader,” and I was wondering who or what you were thinking of in comparison, or what would count on your terms as a “big reader”?

It’s a cliché, but the longer you go on in life, I feel, the more that you know you haven’t read and the more conscious you are of the time that you’re spending in traffic or scrolling or whatever. I don’t actually feel regret about it, per se. This is not a wistful or sad orientation. It’s more of an observing one.

I went to graduate school because I was, like, “O.K., I read a lot about Freud but actually never read any Freud.” And then, when you go to the source text, they’re actually typically so much more anarchic and wild and interesting than you were led to believe by the glosses. I think I have a lot of reading ahead of me. A lot of things that just stand as big open kingdoms that I haven’t yet entered.

There’s this feeling in the air that nobody’s reading or everyone’s anxious about how much they are or are not reading, whether audiobooks count as reading. And I almost wonder if that’s in some way a tacit acknowledgment that reading does demand so much from us in that visceral throwing-a-book-across-the-room way.

I don’t have anything original to add to the discourse around the demise of reading. [The writer and musician] Brontez Purnell was visiting my class last semester, and it was just so great. He was just saying, “I’m not ashamed of scrolling. Are you guys ashamed of your scrolling?” I like this idea that we don’t have to approach everything we do with an “Oh, God, I hate that I’m doing this.” That we can actually just be more cognizant and curious and then also accepting of what we are doing.

I read a lot of books in New York City when there weren’t smartphones, and I took the subway everywhere. That’s not my life anymore. But wherever I can make space to have encounters with books that take time and trouble—those constitute the most transformative and sustaining experiences, really, that I have.

I recently returned to “ The Art of Cruelty .” I opened to a random page, and it took me to the piece that was prompted by the marketing for that 2007 film starring Elisha Cuthbert, “Captivity,” which is part of the genre we might call torture porn. In a line that leaped out at me, you write, “It isn’t much fun to analyze American pop culture anymore.” And you call it something of a “dead end” and a “bore.”

And you’re, like, “Wait a minute. This is what I do.”

You do clarify that you’re not necessarily generalizing. You’re talking about yourself, but I do wonder if you still feel that way.

No, I don’t feel that way. I don’t even know if I felt that way then, entirely. That book is interesting. It was written at this really different moment, even a very different political moment. The book grew out of the Abu Ghraib moment. I don’t really talk about it very much, because the book is really about art, but I was involved with these same questions that Sontag and others had about “What does looking really do?” Which obviously has continued as a discussion about various death spectacles.

But I think that sense of “It’s already offering its own critique,” or “It’s kind of already analyzing itself,” or “It already was kind of part and parcel of this feeling of a kind of . . . ” I don’t know if I would say “despair,” but a frustration that the logic of shock was not going to hold.

It does hold a little bit, it’s not binary, but I’m just saying the mood of the book was there. I’d also just moved to Los Angeles, and there was a certain cynicism. I had moved to West Hollywood, which was very strange. I didn’t really know L.A., and I don’t really know why I moved there, in the belly of the beast of a lot of marketing such that I’d never seen before. And that film was unfortunately one of the first campaigns that I was being immersed in, and it felt to me very related to what was going on with imagery of torture elsewise.

The postering in L.A. is a whole other level of intensity.

The horizon-blotting-out billboard where you can’t look at anything else. I’m over it now. I’ve adapted. I also don’t live in that part of town, but it was pretty jarring when I first got here.

I can well imagine. I would say, though, that it does feel like there’s a kind of revival of the quandary you were thinking through in that book for the past few years. Obviously, the tradition of Black political writing has had a long discourse about the efficacy of witnessing that got, again, revived during the uprising of 2020 . And then I can’t help but think about what’s going on in our most immediate contemporary moment. There are those who would say that seeing, witnessing, is a lever of doing. And then there are many who are seeing that argument put under pressure once again. You haven’t thought about the book in a minute, but I’m wondering if you’ve given any thought to that pressing question of the book, considering our collective witnessing of what’s being done—

—I wouldn’t write the same book the same way now. In my mind, that book is the third of a trilogy. The other two being a book called “Jane” and a book called “ The Red Parts .” And they’re all about sexual violence and about ways of narrativizing or spectacularizing. I wouldn’t even say “witnessing.” I would just say “commodifying,” or something, the problem. That book was also married up with my own job at the time—lecturing about art history—because my interests in art were broader than that.

I would never say witnessing is not a lever of doing, or that it doesn’t have value in and of itself, or that it can’t be something really problematic in and of itself. I think it’s just more that famous Sontag quote, which I don’t quite have at the tip of my tongue, where she says something like “The problem with compassion is that it withers.”

There’s a window of opportunity about what to do with it. I know a lot of people have reached a kind of horror-saturation fatigue, and are not seeing, and have to ask themselves hard questions about—What is all the looking? Is it changing what I’m doing? Am I doing the same, either something or nothing? Also, that book was written at a really different moment with the Internet. It was, I think, written on dial-up. I’m kind of a slow adapter, so it was not a smartphone-era book at all. There’s so much that’s changed since then.

One of the things that becomes interesting to track across the conversations in your latest book, but that’s also implied in conversation across your other books, is this increasing, maybe, skepticism from others with this mode of constant questioning, of interrogating and unsettling, blah, blah, blah. There’s this moment in “The Argonauts” which I really love, when you’re writing about a friend’s feminist-theory class that’s growing disruptively tired of dismantling identities. So much theory of the eighties and nineties was this mode of interrogating which was ostensibly meant to liberate subsequent generations from either identifying or being identified in a certain way. The notion that the inheritors of that are a little bit impatient with it, or there’s something there that actually isn’t sustaining to them, is very interesting to me.

I do think there is a lot of exhaustion with some earlier modes that seemed exciting at the time, but I think that’s as it should be, because people kind of run something through to its logical extensions and then just kind of say, “Well, that was an interesting joyride. Where’s the next car to pick it up?” I think people, a lot of people, students and otherwise that I know, are pretty tired of feeling really bad. And so they’re asking a lot of questions, as Fred [Moten] says, about “How can we make this feel better?” And it doesn’t mean anything easy. And, like I say, it doesn’t mean just being, like, “Oh, make everything like love.” It doesn’t mean that at all. But I do see that kind of everywhere. And I do feel on the playing field with people in terms of figuring out, especially post-pandemic, how we don’t have to make things worse than they may already feel.

You have this lovely piece on Hilton, and I went back and read his piece on you, and he writes that your work “picks at the underbelly of certainty and finds scabs.” I was thinking about this notion of certainty which remains under pressure in a lot of your pieces. Are there moments when you do feel the need to insist or feel a kind of recourse toward certainty or a need to show your hand in a certain way? Are there terms that you won’t contest either for yourself or for others or for the way that you read or interpret a piece of art?

Well, I’m pretty allergic to charges of false consciousness. Just as a kind of guiding rule, I would not really focus on terms that others use. I recently interviewed [the philosopher] Judith Butler for City Lights about their new book, “ Who’s Afraid of Gender? ,” and I felt I really saw them in that book, which is doing what, I think, a lot of people are trying to do, which is really trying to draw communal attention to the terms that we can agree on together. Not that you would never contest them. No, there’s no term I wouldn’t contest personally, because I’m a contestor.

We both know that contestation is part of any political or even aesthetic movement worth its salt. But, at the same time, I think the forces are so egregious that to lose sight of our solidarities is really a recipe for our failure.

I did have a Butler-related question, about our lost hold on the word “performativity,” as both Butler and [the British philosopher] J. L. Austin would have us think of it, in terms of language making reality. I feel there was such a value in the way that they had us think about that term, that this reconfigured meaning of “fake” or “false” doesn’t help us understand in the same way.

The title “Like Love” has built into it a question about performativity. Is it “love” or is it “like love”? And, if it’s “like love,” is that a performance of love? And how do you tell what’s the real thing, right? Maybe here in the pages of The New Yorker is where I tell the world that my undergraduate thesis, when I was but twenty, was titled “The Performance of Intimacy.” I was very interested at that time in literary performances of intimacy—not as false but as embodied and made manifest. At the time, I participated in a lot of dance, and there’s not a distinction in dance between a performance or a gesture that’s real or that’s fake. You’re doing it, you’re gesturing, you’ve moved into the space, and you’re moving your body and you’re making a claim.

All of which is to say that I think the use of the word “performativity” that Butler is always railing against now as a misinterpretation remains important to me, because I think Butler is talking about our lived, embodied lives together and paying close attention to what we do with each other. And I think that is a realm in which true and false are not the most . . . you don’t get the most bang for your buck, let’s just say, with those ideas.

You mention, as you put it, “frustration—which sometimes threatens to tip into rage—that you feel when the conversations you’re having are not the ones you wish you were having.” I guess this is a rather absurd question to ask at the end, but I’m wondering: What are the conversations that you would like to be having more often?

I’m here for the ideas. The conversations we don’t want to be having are the ones that proceed from rotten starts. And it really matters politically, obviously, as well because . . . I can’t remember the Toni Morrison quote, but people set the terms, and then you’re playing defense for the rest of your life, and it’s just a waste of our time. But then you have to get out from under it very quickly. ♦

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How to Do More by Doing Less (and Doing It Better)

By Clay Skipper

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Over the last decade, Cal Newport has become something of a modern workplace ombudsman. A professor of computer science at Georgetown, his books have addressed the ways in which technology can be a cognitive drain on “knowledge workers,” people whose jobs require them to process information. He tackled distracted multi-tasking in Deep Work , the mindless use of digital devices in Digital Minimalism , and forever trying to dig to the bottom of our inboxes in A World Without Email .

His latest book focuses on our obsession with getting things done. In Slow Productivity , he argues that we’ve come to believe in the wrong type of productivity, one that’s based on looking like we’re getting a lot done, which leads to frenetic activity but less actual production. Newport puts forth a three-step solution—do fewer things; work at a natural pace; obsess over quality—that he believes will not only have us less burnt out, but will lead to us getting more and better work done. Wouldn’t that be nice? GQ called him up to ask if it was actually possible.

GQ : Very early on in Slow Productivity , you write, "Perhaps knowledge workers’ problem is not with productivity in a general sense, but instead with a specific faulty definition of this term that has taken hold in recent decades.” Can you explain what that faulty definition is?

Cal Newport : I call it pseudo-productivity. This is the thing causing most of the problems we're seeing, in terms of exhaustion and burnout rising in knowledge work.

In the mid-twentieth century, knowledge work was new and emerging as a major sector. We were used to industrial manufacturing and agriculture. We had this very clear Adam Smith notion of productivity, which was all about ratios. How many cars are we producing per paid labor hour input? How many bushels of wheat are we producing per acre of land under cultivation?

You also had clearly defined production systems. Here's how we build cars. Here's how we rotate our crops. If you change something about your production system, you could measure that ratio and say, do they get better or worse? “Oh, it got better when we switched to an assembly line. That's a more productive way to build cars.” That's how we thought about productivity. It created unfathomable economic growth, all of the wealth on which the modern world was built.

It didn't work in knowledge work, because things got a lot more ambiguous. People would work on multiple different things. What I was working on might be different than what you're working on. It’s much less defined by what's being produced. And there's no clear, centralized production system. Everyone organizes their efforts in their own personal way. It's all obfuscated. There's no system to look at and say, “Can we do better than this?”

So we invented pseudo-productivity: Let’s use visible effort as a proxy for useful activity. If I see you doing something, that's better than not seeing you do something. We're all gathering in an office, and we’ll be there for eight hours, and I will see you working and doing stuff. If you want to be more productive, show up earlier, stay later. That's a classic pseudo-productivity notion: Activity is what's valuable.

Isn't part of the problem here just modern workload, though? For people who are actually getting stuff done, even they are overwhelmed by how much work they have to do.

Pseudo-productivity is what led to the overload. A couple of things came together. If visible activity is what matters, the stakes are very high. If someone asks you to do something, saying no is the clearest rejection of visible activity. You’re turning down what you’re being measured on. In that context, it's very hard to say no. Because all of knowledge work is very informal and personalized in how we organize work, there’s no, “What’s your workload? How much should you be working on? Who’s working on what?” We just say, “More is better than less.”

So people have to start saying yes a lot more. The way we began to manage our workloads was that we waited until the stress and anxiety of everything we had to do got higher than the stress and anxiety of saying no to things. This became the informal way that people manage their workloads in the absence of anything more structured: “I have to say yes to things until I'm so overloaded that I have emotional-social cover to say no to some things”. So it keeps everyone with like twenty percent too much to do.

Saying no is obviously easier for someone who has autonomy. Let’s say someone in a low- or mid-level position has to report to a boss and they get stuff piled on them. How do you suggest that they better say no in an environment where it might be difficult to?

One of the big approaches here is transparency in workload. So a lot of these issues come from the obfuscation of workload. I don't know what you're doing. I just see you as a vessel to accomplish things for me that makes my life easier. If I feel like you're not doing anything, it is because, in the pseudo-productivity sense, you're not being useful. If you're not doing this, I’m assuming you're just not doing anything. But when workloads become more transparent, you begin to get much more saner workload management.

For example, imagine you have a list you keep in a shared document. At the top of the list are the three things I'm actively working on right now. I’m going to give those all my attention, to finish as quickly as possible. Below that is an ordered list of the queue of things that I'm waiting to work on. As soon as I finish one of these active projects, I'm gonna pull in a new thing from that inactive list and I'll start working on that actively as well. This scheme is not about directly saying yes or no to things. It's about having two statuses: Actively working on, and waiting to work on.

Now why would this make a difference beyond just semantics? Because everything you're actively working on brings with it administrative overhead. You have to send emails and have meetings about it. The problem is when you have too many things you're actively working on, they’re all generating their own administrative overhead. This takes up more and more of your time and also fragments your schedule more and more. The more things you're actively working on, the more of your schedule gets taken up talking about work, which leaves very little time to actually do the work. You fall farther behind and you have to wake up early and try to finish things on the weekend.

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If you divide your work between active and non-active, the active things are generating a stream of overhead. The stuff in the waiting queue, wait until that's active then we'll talk about it. This is going to make your day to day drastically better, because now you're dealing with the administrative overhead of 2 or 3 projects, compared to 10 or 15. Over time, the rate at which you're finishing projects is going to increase. The quality of the project is going to increase.

So now the question is, will you get away with this? We often conjure the idea of the moustache-twirling boss: “You’re my pawn that I'm manipulating.” But, actually, we misattribute the problem we are solving for bosses. We think that the problem we're solving for bosses is doing things for them right away. The actual problem bosses want solved is that something comes into their world that is a source of stress for them. They want you to make that no longer a source of stress. So if you use something like this list method, you're taking the worry away.

One of your solutions is “Obsess over quality.” In there, you discuss the idea of taste and to me that reminded me of an idea from Kyle Chayka’s book Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture about how taste is disappearing because the algorithm is largely determining our likes for us. How certain are you that people even care about quality any more? Are market forces pushing us towards engagement and stimulation over quality?

Kyle's ideas are really smart, and I largely agree with him, but this is talking largely in the world of culture and media, in particular. He’s right on that when you move more content production to the cybernetic curation algorithm, it really does lead to a flattening of this notion of what's good and what's bad.

In the context of my book, it is a way more general application of taste, way less sexy. When I talk about quality in the book, it's quality in the thing you do in your job that matters. When I say improve your taste, what it means is we don't spend enough time thinking about what makes the good stuff good. Why is this better than that ? If we’re ambitious, we jump right into, “I want to get better.” But we don't always spend the time first to say, well, what is better? I shouldn't really go after my super ambitious movie project as a young director until I've studied a lot of movies. You’ve got to understand what good is before you can really follow the path to becoming better.

So of your three precepts—“do fewer things; work at a more natural pace; obsess over quality”— where is it hardest for you to practice what you preach?

Day to day, “do fewer things” is one you have to keep fighting. If you take on too many missions at a high level, you're going to have too many projects because each mission has to generate projects to stay alive. And if you have too many ongoing projects, it's going to generate too many tasks and you're going to have too much to do. You have to keep pruning.

But the actual hardest thing to do of those three principles, in terms of execution, is the obsession over quality. Continually returning back to, “I'm going to get better at this core thing I do.” That's the hardest activity. It’s really hard to get better.

So, long-term, the big struggle is continuing to come back to trying to get better. Short-term, the fight of overwhelm is always there. You're not going to always get that right. You're going to find yourself like, I went too far in this direction and have to pull back . I'm constantly fighting that.

There’s another part of your book where you write about how we always underestimate how long a project will take us, that we should take our estimate and double it.

My whole theory about planning is that we write a fairy tale that we love. We fall in love with the story of our over-ambitious plan. Because if we could actually execute that plan, it would make our life great. If I finish this in a week, my God, that would be fantastic. If I could finish this book before the semester began, that would be so great. So we write these stories and we fall in love with the stories because we want that story to be true. Of course, they’re completely unrealistic. And we end up worse off because the whole thing falls apart.

When we’ve spoken in the past , you’ve compared the digital hygiene movement to the fitness craze that took place in the wake of the obesity epidemic. How are you thinking about it now?

The way I've been thinking about the—and I don't really like the term—digital wellness space, where we are now, there's three phases in terms of our confrontations with the digital world and networks.

The first phase was the exuberance phase: Steve Jobs keynote iPhone phase. This is awesome. This is a nice leap forward. These tools are really cool. It all felt fresh. We're gonna solve all these problems. We experimented. We gave phones to our 10-year-olds. It was this fun period, like 2007 to 2016.

Then we got to phase two, which is the phase I'm probably most associated with. We start realizing, "Wait a second, there's parts of my life as a human that are important to me that this is encroaching on in a way that is making my life worse.” Phase two was the protectionist retrenchment phase, right? We need to protect this part of our life from these technologies. It’s a lot of putting up barriers. It’s not all just great.

Phase three, that I think we're entering now is, how do we figure out what to avoid, but also what to go big on?

I coined this term in the New Yorker last December , called techno-selectionism. The idea is technological developments have these huge propulsive impacts on the human condition. When these technologies are interacting with social economic systems, it's really hard to figure out what the impacts are going to be. So you have sweeping positive developments. Look back 150 years ago. There are so many things that were worse than they are now because technologies hadn’t developed yet. But they also have these unpredictable and huge negative impacts as well. How do we navigate that reality?

A big part of techno-selectionism is being willing to go back on something. A great example is social media. It was like web 2.0 made more accessible. Kids were using it. And then it was like, you know what, this is rotting kids’ brains. Let's go back on that and say, actually, kids shouldn't use that.

In natural selection, you have a selective function, which is success and reproduction. We have to be the selective function for the technology, and then we can get more positives and blunt some of the negatives.

This interview has been edited and condensed .

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Short Essay on Myself [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

In this lesson, you will learn how you can write short essays on the title ‘Myself’. In this session, there will be three sets of essays written within different word limits.

Short Essay on Myself in 100 Words

My name is Priya Raj and I live in Kolkata with my family. My father is an engineer while my mother is a housewife. I have a younger brother and we both attend the same public school. I am the monitor of my class. My favourite subjects are science and social studies. I have a lot of hobbies like painting, dancing and playing badminton.

At home, I help my mom with the household chores and help my brother with his studies. I also tutor the children of our housemaid for free, whenever I get the time because she cannot afford to send them to tuition. I believe every human being has the right to live well and be happy.

Short Essay on Myself in 200 Words

If I have to describe myself in a sentence, I would say that I am a humble, kind, honest and hard-working person who wants to help make this world a better place. My name is Priya Raj and I live in the city of joy – Kolkata, with my family. My father is an engineer and my mother is a housewife. I have a brother who is three years younger than me. Both of us go to the same public school.

I love to learn and am very attentive at school. My favourite subjects are science and social studies. I am the monitor of my class. I also love to play and am a part of our school’s basketball team. Other than basketball, I can play chess, badminton and table tennis. I also have a lot of hobbies like painting and dancing. At home, I help my mother in the kitchen and with other household chores.

I help my brother study and do his homework. I also tutor the children of our housemaid for free, whenever I get the time because she cannot afford to send them to tuition. I participate in all the charitable activities that take place in our neighbourhood. I believe that every human being has the right to live well and be happy.

Short Essay on Myself in 400 Words

We all have different personalities, ideas, habits, talents and interests and each one of us would describe ourselves differently. I like to describe myself as a humble, kind, honest, caring and hard-working person. My name is Priya Raj and I live in the city of joy – Kolkata, with my family. My father is an engineer and my mother is a housewife. I have a brother who is three years younger than me. Both of us attend the same public school.

I like to learn new things and am attentive at school. My favourite subjects are science and social studies. I find the study of ancient civilizations very fascinating and read a lot of books on the subject. My school teachers are very kind and answer all my questions. I also love to play and am a part of our school’s basketball team. Other than basketball, I can play chess, badminton and table tennis. My father always encourages me to play outdoor games and take part in various activities. He says it will help me stay fit and healthy. Many parents do not want their daughters to participate in sports, so, I feel blessed to have such a supportive family.

I have a lot of hobbies like painting, dancing and doing embroidery. I have always been very creative and my parents provide me with everything necessary to explore my creative side. I recently finished painting a portrait of my parents for their anniversary and they loved it. I felt very happy seeing my parents happy and proud.

When I am at home, I help my mother in the kitchen and with other household chores. I also help my brother with his studies and homework. He is a good student and always pays attention whenever I am explaining something. Our housemaid has two little children who are in elementary school. Because she cannot afford to send them to tuition, I tutor them for free whenever I have the time. The children love to spend time with me.

I am someone who wants to contribute to society and make this world a better place. I always take part in charitable events in our neighbourhood. Last summer vacation we took the initiative to teach underprivileged children how to read and write. It was a nice experience. I want to open free schools for underprivileged children and care homes for the elderly when I grow up. I believe that every human being has the right to live well and be happy.

That was all you can write in short essays on ‘Myself.’ In this lesson, I have written these essays in simple words that all kinds of students can easily understand. If you still have any doubts regarding this session, kindly let me know through some quick comments below. To read more such essays on various important topics, keep browsing our website.

To get the latest updates on our upcoming sessions, keep connected with us on Telegram . Thank you. See you again, soon.

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

selfie photo of man with glasses, in background is swim-up bar with two women facing away

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

photo of elaborate twisting multicolored waterslides with long stairwell to platform

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

2 photos: a ship's foamy white wake stretches to the horizon; a man at reailing with water and two large ships docked behind

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

2 photos: 2 slices of pizza on plate; man in "Daddy's Little Meatball" shirt and shorts standing in outdoor dining area with ship's exhaust stacks in background

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

photo of sheltered sandy beach with palms, umbrellas, and chairs with two large docked cruise ships in background

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

photo from inside of spacious geodesic-style glass dome facing ocean, with stairwells and seating areas

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

photo of author smiling and holding soft-serve ice-cream cone with outdoor seating area in background

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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The physical sensations of watching a total solar eclipse

Regina Barber, photographed for NPR, 6 June 2022, in Washington DC. Photo by Farrah Skeiky for NPR.

Regina G. Barber

Science writer David Baron witnesses his first total solar eclipse in Aruba, 1998. He says seeing one is "like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world." Paul Myers hide caption

Science writer David Baron witnesses his first total solar eclipse in Aruba, 1998. He says seeing one is "like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world."

David Baron can pinpoint the first time he got addicted to chasing total solar eclipses, when the moon completely covers up the sun. It was 1998 and he was on the Caribbean island of Aruba. "It changed my life. It was the most spectacular thing I'd ever seen," he says.

Baron, author of the 2017 book American Eclipse: A Nation's Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World , wants others to witness its majesty too. On April 8, millions of people across North America will get that chance — a total solar eclipse will appear in the sky. Baron promises it will be a surreal, otherworldly experience. "It's like you've left the solar system and are looking back from some other world."

Baron, who is a former NPR science reporter, talks to Life Kit about what to expect when viewing a total solar eclipse, including the sensations you may feel and the strange lighting effects in the sky. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Baron views the beginning of a solar eclipse with friends in Western Australia in 2023. Baron says getting to see the solar corona during a total eclipse is "the most dazzling sight in the heavens." Photographs by David Baron; Bronson Arcuri, Kara Frame, CJ Riculan/NPR; Collage by Becky Harlan/NPR hide caption

Baron views the beginning of a solar eclipse with friends in Western Australia in 2023. Baron says getting to see the solar corona during a total eclipse is "the most dazzling sight in the heavens."

What does it feel like to experience a total solar eclipse — those few precious minutes when the moon completely covers up the sun?

It is beautiful and absolutely magnificent. It comes on all of a sudden. As soon as the moon blocks the last rays of the sun, you're plunged into this weird twilight in the middle of the day. You look up and the blue sky has been torn away. On any given day, the blue sky overhead acts as a screen that keeps us from seeing what's in space. And suddenly that's gone. So you can look into the middle of the solar system and see the sun and the planets together.

Can you tell me about the sounds and the emotions you're feeling?

A total solar eclipse is so much more than something you just see with your eyes. It's something you experience with your whole body. [With the drop in sunlight], birds will be going crazy. Crickets may be chirping. If you're around other people, they're going to be screaming and crying [with all their emotions from seeing the eclipse]. The air temperature drops because the sunlight suddenly turns off. And you're immersed in the moon's shadow. It doesn't feel real.

Everything you need to know about solar eclipse glasses before April 8

In your 2017 Ted Talk , you said you felt like your eyesight was failing in the moments before totality. Can you go into that a little more?

The lighting effects are very weird. Before you get to the total eclipse, you have a progressive partial eclipse as the moon slowly covers the sun. So over the course of an hour [or so], the sunlight will be very slowly dimming. It's as if you're in a room in a house and someone is very slowly turning down the dimmer switch. For most of that time your eyes are adjusting and you don't notice it. But then there's a point at which the light's getting so dim that your eyes can't adjust, and weird things happen. Your eyes are less able to see color. It's as if the landscape is losing its color. Also there's an effect where the shadows get very strange.

Crescent-shaped shadows cast by the solar eclipse before it reaches totality appear on a board at an eclipse-viewing event in Antelope, Ore., 2017. Kara Frame and CJ Riculan/NPR hide caption

You see these crescents on the ground.

There are two things that happen. One is if you look under a tree, the spaces between leaves or branches will act as pinhole projectors. So you'll see tiny little crescents everywhere. But there's another effect. As the sun goes from this big orb in the sky to something much smaller, shadows grow sharper. As you're nearing the total eclipse, if you have the sun behind you and you look at your shadow on the ground, you might see individual hairs on your head. It's just very odd.

Some people might say that seeing the partial eclipse is just as good. They don't need to go to the path of totality.

A partial solar eclipse is a very interesting experience. If you're in an area where you see a deep partial eclipse, the sun will become a crescent like the moon. You can only look at it with eye protection. Don't look at it with the naked eye . The light can get eerie. It's fun, but it is not a thousandth as good as a total eclipse.

A total eclipse is a fundamentally different experience, because it's only when the moon completely blocks the sun that you can actually take off the eclipse glasses and look with the naked eye at the sun.

And you will see a sun you've never seen before. That bright surface is gone. What you're actually looking at is the sun's outer atmosphere, the solar corona. It's the most dazzling sight in the heavens. It's this beautiful textured thing. It looks sort of like a wreath or a crown made out of tinsel or strands of silk. It shimmers in space. The shape is constantly changing. And you will only see that if you're in the path of the total eclipse.

Shots - Health News

Watching a solar eclipse without the right filters can cause eye damage. here's why.

So looking at a partial eclipse is not the same?

It is not at all the same. Drive those few miles. Get into the path of totality.

This is really your chance to see a total eclipse. The next one isn't happening across the U.S. for another 20 years.

The next significant total solar eclipse in the United States won't be until 2045. That one will go from California to Florida and will cross my home state of Colorado. I've got it on my calendar.

The digital story was written by Malaka Gharib and edited by Sylvie Douglis and Meghan Keane. The visual editor is Beck Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected].

Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify , and sign up for our newsletter .

NPR will be sharing highlights here from across the NPR Network throughout the day Monday if you're unable to get out and see it in real time.

Correction April 3, 2024

In a previous audio version of this story, we made reference to an upcoming 2025 total solar eclipse. The solar eclipse in question will take place in 2045.

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “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.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

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COMMENTS

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2,800 words. Syndicate this essay. Good conversation mixes opinions, feelings, facts and ideas in an improvisational exchange with one or more individuals in an atmosphere of goodwill. It inspires mutual insight, respect and, most of all, joy. It is a way of relaxing the mind, opening the heart and connecting, authentically, with others.
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Take some time to reflect on all versions of yourself. This is a deeply intimate and revealing practice that can offer healing, insight, and hope. Write a letter to your younger self. Thank them, praise them, scold them, comfort them—engage in whatever way you feel led with one or many versions of your younger self.
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Conversations With Myself gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure: from letters written in the darkest hours of Mandela's twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom. Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or recording troubled dreams on the desk calendar of his cell on Robben Island; writing ...
The Most Important Conversations You'll Ever Have Are With Yourself
One person loses an arm and falls into alcoholism, shame, and despair. Another person loses an arm and becomes a world-renowned Paralympian. This difference is not inherent within the people or the situation. It is a consequence of how each person translates the meaning of losing an arm.
Conversations With Myself
Conversations With Myself is a moving collection of letters, diary entries and other writing that provides a rare chance to see the other side of Nelson Mandela's life, in his own voice: direct, clear, private. An international bestseller, Conversations With Myself is an intensely personal book that complements his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.In his foreword to Nelson Mandela's book ...
Conversations with Myself
An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice. While other books have recounted Mandela's life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with ...
Conversations With My Younger Self
Today, my mind utters, "Thank you, Nana, for your tenderness; for accepting me; and for your generous maternal love that I craved.". The gift of years enables me to look at the past with ...
In conversation with self
Typical ways of reflecting in conversation with yourself. Ensure you are aware of when you do it, for example you might choose to do it on your way to the shop. You might realise while shopping that you were thinking about an event while walking there, but that won't necessarily make the thinking you did on the way to the shop reflection.
Conversations With Myself by Nelson Mandela
Conversations With Myself, Nelson Mandela, Barack ObamaConversations With Myself is a 2010 collection of Nelson Mandela's speeches, letters, conversation and some of his publications. Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts ...
Essay on Myself: 100 Words, 250 Words and 300 Words
250 Words Essay on Myself. My name is Ayushi Singh but my mother calls me "Ayu". I turned 12 years old this August and I study in class 7th. I have an elder sister named Aishwarya. She is like a second mother to me. I have a group of friends at school and out of them Manvi is my best friend.
Conversations with Myself Summary and Reviews
An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice. While other books have recounted Mandela's life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with ...
Conversations with myself by Nelson Mandela
Conversations with myself. Edit. Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. A singular ...
Conversations with Myself
Conversations with Myself is a very personal book - a book of private thoughts and lessons learned; but, as we have come to expect from the great man, the sense of hope and gentle wisdom that shines from these letters and diaries make this a book for everyone - a chance to share Mandela's recollections of a long life, fully lived. ...
Conversations with myself : Mandela, Nelson, 1918-2013
xxi, 454 pages : 25 cm "This historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation offers an unprecedented insight into Mandela's remarkable life - from his first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage
Think of Dreams as Conversations With Yourself
Think of Dreams as Conversations With Yourself A dream series often offers repeating elements that reflect how the mind mulls. Posted Dec 31, 2020 . SHARE. TWEET. EMAIL. COMMENTS.
How To Talk About Yourself (+ 12 Good Things To Say)
3. Engage and respond (appropriately!) If someone has mentioned that they enjoy something you also enjoy, this is a really easy way to talk about yourself without bragging. It will help you engage the person you're speaking with, they'll be able to relate to you more, and the conversation will feel much more natural.
"Conversations with Myself" launch
Home. "Conversations with Myself" launch - a photo essay. November 1, 2010 - The official South African launch of Nelson Mandela's new book Conversations with Myself was held at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg with acclaimed South African playwright and actor John Kani reading extracts from the book and leading a discussion between Mr ...
Conversation With Myself
Always Be the First to Choose Yourself. I kept mum and only listened. Along with the coffee I could sip on the beautiful discovery about myself. The villain called "Time" had robbed me of my own self. It had made a puppet out of me. I was running here and there to find myself. But, the conversation today. Marked a hold on me to be free.
Maggie Nelson on the Conversations She Wants to Be Having
This book, I feel like, to me it's an in-joke with myself to have "essays" on the cover, because people have been calling me an essayist for years. And in my opinion I've never published ...
How to Do More By Doing Less (and Doing It Better)
A conversation with professor and productivity expert Cal Newport, whose latest book says there's a way to get more done—and avoid burning yourself out while you do it. Over the last decade, Cal ...
Short Essay on Myself [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF
Short Essay on Myself in 400 Words. We all have different personalities, ideas, habits, talents and interests and each one of us would describe ourselves differently. I like to describe myself as a humble, kind, honest, caring and hard-working person. My name is Priya Raj and I live in the city of joy - Kolkata, with my family.
Hanif Abdurraqib's new book ponders LeBron James, coming-of-age ...
Hanif Abdurraqib's new book, There's Always This Year, is difficult even for the author to summarize — it's part memoir, part basketball analysis, part poetry and essay collections. In today's ...
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever
Day 2. I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: "Ayn Rand." Jesus Christ. I breakfast alone ...
Here's what it's like to view a total solar eclipse : Life Kit : NPR
On April 8, millions of people across North America will get that chance — a total solar eclipse will appear in the sky. Baron promises it will be a surreal, otherworldly experience. "It's like ...
The Cut's viral essay on having an age gap is really about marrying
The Image Bank/Getty Images. Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine's the Cut argues, to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when ...

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Think of Dreams as Conversations With Yourself

How To Talk About Yourself (+ 12 Good Things To Say)

1. Keep it short and snappy.

2. Be honest – you’ll appreciate this later, trust us!

3. Engage and respond (appropriately!)

4. Be confident – or pretend to be!

5. Accept potential judgement.

6. Prepare something in advance.

7. Reverse the question.

8. Don’t be scared of talking yourself up…

9. …But don’t talk yourself up too much!

10. Keep it casual.

11. Back yourself up.

12. Be consistent.

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Correction April 3, 2024

That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.