what does it mean to live a beautiful life?
a rallying call for 2025
Happy (almost) new year, friends! Next year, I will publish one sunday scaries a month. I don’t know if I even believe that yet, but, I’m manifesting, ok?
Here’s to more of me yapping in 2025!
When I first moved to California, there was a question that frequented the shadows of my inner dialogue: “how do I build a life that I am proud of?”
As I learned more about my new environment, and about myself in said environment, I found the question to be more haunting than curious. Am I going to look back on this period of my life with fondness? or regret? What can I do today to ensure it’s fondness?
I don’t think there’s one right answer to this question, and I think its fruitless to try and write a script for your life today in order to achieve some bigger picture you can look back on and decide was “right.”
With that said, though, I do think you can hold yourself to certain boundaries, standards, values (whatever you want to call them) in order to create a life that feels easy for you to live each day. That’s what I think my “thing” has been lately- I want to build a life that feels easy to live. Not a life without conflict, or struggle, or hard work, necessarily, (though, if a mysterious benefactor wants to fund my lavish lifestyle, I am completely unopposed) but a life where I’m not in conflict with myself about the decisions I make, the relationships I invest in, and the ways in which I choose to spend my time.
I want boundaries with myself so infallible that I am simply unable to waste hours toiling over choices I’ve made, because I will have made them with certainty of my values. As someone who is her own harshest critic, and, given ten minutes and the inkling of a bad feeling, can think herself into an anxiety stomachache, an easy life, for me, is one where I am unburdened by doubt, fear, and indecision. An easy life is one where I know what I stand for, and the actions I take are in line with those standards. And, maybe in the most naive way, I truly believe that is my recipe to build a life that I can look back and be proud of.
I’ve been trying really hard to read more.
A once voracious reader, (I once read and reread the first Hunger Games book 7 times on a drive to Florida) I am at the perfect crux of the social media brain rot generation (rip my attention span), academic burnout, and just not prioritizing reading, to have lost the skill. But, like riding a bike (which I have also lost the skill to do) I am committing to working the muscle up again until the idea of sitting down and reading a book doesn’t give me a (what else is new) anxiety stomachache. (I should probably go to the gastroenterologist…)
Aimless in my pursuit of getting back to reading more, I nudged forward in the right direction, thanks to this tweet. I looked through my bookmarks and uncovered a treasure trove of articles collecting cyber-dust, weeping to be read. I began with something more recently saved, a personal narrative from Esquire written by a homeless man named Patrick Fealey, which had popped up on my feed in retweets from other users quite a few times.
I took a couple of days to read the whole thing, a deviation from my usual charge ahead, all-or-nothing attitude towards reading. I think it helped me digest the piece better.
Fealey’s narrative, a heartbreaking, rage-inducing, meaning-of-life questioning collection of experiences as a homeless man in southern Rhode Island, is a brutal reminder that America is vast, full of people whose stories do not fit cleanly into the quintessentially American idea of meritocracy - if you work hard, you will succeed. It also stirs a deep discomfort in me - as I think it should; it is an indictment of the hyperindependent culture we continue to nurture despite being social, highly dependent creatures.
When did we become so willing to turn our heads to the suffering of the people around us?
A once decorated journalist, evident in his deeply compelling and affective writing, Fealey’s self-described “violent and disabling onset of manic depression” rendered him unable to work in the late 90s, and he became homeless in 2023. He and his companion, a dog named Lilly, live out of his car, enjoying each others company and living in a world that pretends to see homelessness as a social ill, but in reality, would rather just not see it at all.
I receive $960 a month from SSDI. I should have $32 a day, but my needs, and a few wants, are debiting my account. Gas is costing $10 to $15 a day, food is $5 to $8 a day, coffee $7, beer $9, ice $45 a month, nicotine patches $86 a month, and jugs of spring water $80 a month. Other incidentals like toilet paper add up. Living as minimally as I know how, I’m not making it. I’m losing weight I don’t have to lose. I quit smoking and went on the patch to save money. Alcohol is the buffer a sensitive soul needs to withstand the crimes of a race—the human race—that has proved itself ungrateful and homicidal.
The toughest parts of homelessness have been surviving the poverty and the marginalization, discrimination, and hostility from the non-homeless population. It’s usually subtle, this hostility. People pull in to visit the lighthouse or the beach or wherever I am, see me, and immediately park somewhere else. All day long.
Patrick Fealey, The Invisible Man. Esquire Magazine, 2024
I am struck by Fealey’s story and the way he describes his relationships to other people in his life.
Lane, his girlfriend who lives with her parents and helps Patrick in the ways she can off a meager salary from her hotel job. His semi-estranged sister, who he is hesitant to ask for support for, but who owns a home and drives a Lexus. A lone passerby, the first person to reach out for help in 6 months, who offers him a sandwich. And the police, who, despite their personal intentions, always instill anxiety in Patrick no matter the interaction; an overmilitarized police force with unchecked power will do that to you.
What do we owe each other?
It is yet another big, loud, demanding question that coats every corner of my brain, a sticky syrup that covers the walls of my mind and envelopes my other thoughts.
The idea of social responsibility has been toiled over for centuries; I don’t actually know much about the theory behind it, but Wikipedia (sue me) breaks down the history of the philosophical tradition of social responsibility like this:
Without making too many assumptions something I haven’t done any actual research on, it does feel telling that, the ancient Greek and Roman theoretical understandings are juxtaposed to a more modern Western application towards corporate social responsibility.
How could we forget the most important stakeholder in the social fabric…the corporation!
Social responsibility has been on my mind as I consider what it would mean to create a beautiful life, and obviously, as I read Patrick Fealey’s piece. My own crises of self-discovery, morality, and if I should get a Master’s degree in Philosophy aside, I do think that social responsibility is something we should all be considering as we confront another Trump presidency, a possible new pandemic (I haven’t shut up about Bird Flu since the astrologers told me about it in like March fwiw), and our social and political culture at-large.
Social responsibility is the invisible fabric by which we can keep ourselves alive, joyful, free. Social responsibility is the decision to say I will care for you, you will care for me, we will take care of each other. To this end, at the very least, we owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to be better, kinder, more dependable towards each other.
I think, the world can be such an isolating, cold, and hellish place, that we just have to be more responsible for each other. In a world that will dispose of us, render us invisible, and leave us for dead, I implore you with equal fervor that I implore myself, to embrace the challenge, the sacrifice, and the inconvenience of caring for each other. This will inevitably also open us up to the beauty, the freedom, and the love that caring for each other also provides.
Last week, I ask Wassa to pick up my mom’s gift for me at the Bloomingdale’s on 59th street - a location that was without a doubt out of the way for her.
I pick up Diana in upper Manhattan and take her to Newark Airport so she can avoid an astronomical uber - a $16 toll and holiday airport madness the charge to me
Bre’s partner Ezra cleans the post-Christmas mess in their apartment without asking, knowing she is too spent to do it herself.
Most nights, my mom cooks dinner, and my dad takes the dishwashing shift to keep a steady equilibrium.
When I am in a pinch, my brother sends me $100 to hold me to the end of the week. I promise to send it back as soon as I get paid, and if I forget (like little sisters do), he doesn’t hold it against me next time I ask.
To me, a beautiful life is one that is intricately and intimately connected with those around me. It is one where I extend myself to help another, and they extend themself to help me in return. However, it is not transactional, but reciprocal. We need each other. We love each other.
A life that I am proud of, is one where I create boundaries to nurture and protect the love I have for my community, for people.
They are interchangeable to me - “a beautiful life” and “a life I am proud of.” My life is beautiful because I am working hard to create a standard of reciprocal care and love, rooted in justice and the ability for you and I to meet each others needs. I am infinitely proud of this.
And, I am inviting other people to join me into the practice of giving little pieces of ourselves to each other, and committing to holding them with gentleness.
At the tail end of a beast of a year, I ask, and encourage you to respond in the comments:
What have you done for another this year in support of building a more beautiful, interconnected, interdependent life?
adriana’s ins and outs of 2024-5
IN:
substack (duh)
financial planning
emotional vulnerability (telling our crushes how we feel 2025!) (you first, though!)
crossword puzzles
google sheets (ask me about my mother of all lists spreadsheet, im begging)
being bad at a new hobby and pursuing it anyway
OUT:
excessive marketing emails (no more e-clutter! hit that unsubscribe button!)
breaking the dopamine button (we are lowering our screen and limiting our impulse purchases)
amazon (girl, the boycott)
being hypercritical of ourselves
weird regression into 90s/early-2000s body/food culture
What a lovely thing to stumble upon this time of year. Hope you’re doing well!
WE NEED EACH OTHER WE LOVE EACH OTHER AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
i remember being 24 and constantly asking myself how i was going to create the life i want …….. literally never occurred to me to ask what kind of life i might be proud of. i love ur mind.
i just read a bell hooks interview where she spoke abt living with integrity, as a congruence between your feelings, words, and actions; reading ur words, i think this is absolutely a path toward ease and away from fear, committing to yourself, & to being yourself. because the cost of fear, the cost of denying yourself, is too high!!! i think this also gets to what we owe each other in terms of being reliable and allowing people to love you. anyways ily ily