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Deep down, it seems everyone simply wants to be liked by others. All of us humans carry this built-in, pervasive itch day after day, across ages and thousands of miles. It must be related to survival strategies developed over millennia, a foundational aspect of our inescapable social nature. At some level, I think we can recognize this hope for acceptance in ourselves and others when we genuinely interact with people, even if it's buried under layers of denial and scar tissue. At least I believe we can train ourselves to think this way. 

I listened to a talk by Charles Yu, an author who recently won a National Book Award for Interior Chinatown, which I haven't read (yet). He was a corporate lawyer for over a decade before switching to writing full-time. He discussed his struggles during that time to embody what he imaged a lawyer to be: someone more aggressive or assertive or domineering, not a "quiet Asian guy" like himself. 

He said his efforts to align with an image of who he should be, this twisted mental game, held him back personally and professionally. He boxed himself into a corner, erecting the slippery walls himself. Looking back, he said, when he opened up and showed people who he really was, told them that he liked writing, they actually liked him more than when he was hiding, and they shared details about themselves in return. He ended up doing his job better because of it. His self-imposed facade, a defense against potential persecution, had transformed into a weight holding him down. 

It a paradox how we hurt ourselves by stifling the authentic self, when releasing it ended up yielding the very things hoped for, the things we thought we could gain only through this stringency.

 

Authenticity is palpable and inspirational, which is why I think it's powerful. So much more is achievable when those walls are taken down and rest replaces the defenses. We all know this well, but it still takes bravery to follow-through. 

 

My sister and I watched The Green Knight last week. Like so many tales before, it has a message warning  against living a lie. Doing so eats everything around you, slowly. Better to face the demon and win peace of mind. Then comes the good stuff.

National Identities

I was sitting in the Tuileries Garden, the sun tucked behind puffy clouds yet still radiant, fiery. My friend, donning Ray-Bans, short hair on his cheeks and long hair on his head, was saying something along the lines of:

    "People have died for ideas. But what even is an idea? A nation is an idea. Everything is an idea."

 

I was in France for the first time in August. I quickly noticed a strong reverence for precedent there. Legitimacy is proven by the idea that a place, or food, or ideology, or language, or style, has been tried and tested by a long line of predecessors. An unambiguous pride stems from heritage. I got the impression that the French nation is defined by a lore, a history more than cherished but quite deliberately placed centrally in their society like the Black Stone in the Kaaba; a people who root themselves in camaraderie with the countless that came before. 

 

This sacred historical mythos, the national religion, comes in a different, still patriotic form on this side of the pond. For better or worse, I think ours is more future-oriented with a healthy dollop of underdog, rags-to-riches, land of endless potential rhetoric. Our possibilities unite us, not a shared past. All nations are ideas, after all. 

I also saw that conflict is an essential ingredient to the conception of the nation-state in both countries. At Versailles there's a hall of paintings glorifying the major French battles up to Napoleon. The story of France. In Washington DC, a visitor walks up the National Mall, strolling from Lincoln to the Capitol, through a series of memorials for our 20th century wars. The story of America. 

Deliberate effort is exerted to unite the mass of individuals with a shared idea. A nation is far more capable than the sum of its parts. That seems to be what politics is all about. From my limited exposure, it seems the French have created a sturdy, gravitational, pervasive idea to define themselves; forged through centuries of war and power struggle, but also the stroke of paintbrushes and pens.