My small grinchy heart

On the loneliness of the writer in every room

I’ve been trying to convince my students that writing is a fundamentally social act. And, for this reason, they will become better writers by actually coming to class every week and being, you know, social—in community. This is a tall ask in the era of online learning but I want to counter the myth of the writer as solitary genius, of the art monster alone at the typewriter in the attic. In class, I talk about conducting interviews and working with editors and getting peer feedback and attending conferences and even having conversations with friends that shape what we write and how we think. In all of these ways writing is social.

But the thing I don’t tell them is that writing is also fundamentally lonely. Because the stance of the writer as observer automatically sets you apart from the world. And there’s no way around it, not that I can find. To record and recreate experience in language is to take a step back from actually living, to put a critical distance between yourself and the world around you.

I was a particularly shy kid, easily paralyzed by anyone older or more interesting or more powerful than me, which when you’re young is basically everyone. I was so afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and the world seemed full of social landmines that even the most cautious person could trip. I like to imagine that I’ve mostly overcome my shyness in adulthood, that I’ve learned that the social world is more forgiving than I once thought it to be, and that I am capable of being warm and friendly and confident. And sometimes I believe this. But other times I think what I’ve actually done is just convert my shyness into a writing career. 

For a while it seemed like turning my life into a series of writing projects was a pretty brilliant thing to do. I had a bad track record with love and was mystified by dating: might as well turn that into the subject of a book. After all, even a boring date could make a good story. And I didn’t have to feel the sting of rejection if I looked at it with enough distance. I could study the sting instead. Metabolize it. Turn it into words. 

But then a few years ago, when I was at a retreat in India, I started to have some doubts about this strategy. The retreat was a gathering of folks who had, in one way or another, dedicated their lives to the service of others. It was really a sampling of the best humanity has to offer. And then there was me.

When I met the other participants (a Nobel peace laureate, a Buddhist nun, a man who helped treat PTSD in kids who were also refugees, and—no kidding—the spiritual advisor to one Ms. Oprah Winfrey), I felt a lot like Eleanor Shellstrop arriving in The Good Place. I was sure a mistake had been made with my invitation. But that didn’t matter because I had a notebook and a pen.

It was 2018 and I was full of rage and helplessness—about the fact that my department was systematically eliminating my colleague’s jobs, about how the doctors at our fertility clinic made me feel so small and incompetent, about everything that had happened in the year since Donald Trump had taken office. The political divides that existed within my own family, divides that once seemed like small-but-crossable gaps, suddenly felt like chasms. I did not know how to orient myself to this new world of moral certainty and constant outrage other than to join the chorus. 

Like many people, I’d gotten very good at identifying exactly what was wrong with the world. But what I really wanted—in a kind of desperate and overwhelming way—was a different way to live. I thought I could go to this retreat and learn something about kindness and generosity. I thought, if nothing else, I could turn it into a writing project.

For a few days this worked. I listened to talks, toured temples, learned about Gandhi, took copious notes. But things came to a head one evening after dinner. A member of the group was going to perform a few of his songs. I’d been hearing about this guy since the day I arrived and I was excited to finally see him perform. He seemed to have almost legendary status among the other retreat-goers. Years earlier he’d formed a successful rap group with friends—with a video on MTV and everything. But conventional success wasn’t doing it for him, so he moved back to India to volunteer with kids in the slums. He kept making music but gave it away for free online. He already seemed like a supremely decent person, but then I learned that, when he was on tour, his act of service was cleaning the bathrooms of the gas stations along the way. I mean, come on!

The opening song was called “Being Kind” and my first impression was, well, not kind. The music was pop-y—upbeat piano and electric guitar that reminded me of the music I heard at church camp as a pre-teen. I wanted to like it but the song felt too earnest somehow. And every time the chorus came around, the English teacher in me winced over a noun-pronoun agreement problem. I didn’t like noticing this, but something in me just couldn’t help it

But when I looked around the room, it was clear I was the only one who felt this way. Everyone else knew the song. And they were singing along, not casually but exuberantly. Their eyes were alight—like little LEDs had turned on inside their heads. These lyrics weren’t cheesy; they were profound. 

Slowly, people began reaching their arms around each other’s shoulders and swaying. Before long, small clusters of people were banding together and I could see that it was a matter of moments until everyone in the room was in one big circle. And the circle was coming for me. There was no avoiding it. An arm snaked across my back and I understood that I would be a spectacularly terrible person—really the worst kind—if any of the thoughts I was having were visible on my face. 

For a moment, I thought of the scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas when the Grinch hears all the Whos down in Whoville singing on Christmas morning. They are impossibly joyful, despite the fact that he’s taken all their gifts and decorations and even the roast beast. As their voices echo over the snow, he is so moved by the resilience of their spirit that his heart grows three sizes. I was having that moment, except in reverse. I could feel my heart shrinking, size by size, as the song played on. 

I put a smile on my face but it felt brittle, pathetic. What was I missing? Why was I so resistant to this moment, to these genuinely lovely people surrounding me? Why did their apparent delight make me want to cower and run out of the room? What would it have cost me to sing along? Apparently more than I had to offer.

I swayed halfheartedly, trying to fake a light in my eyes, but I was sure that anyone who looked at me would see my shrinking, grinchy heart.

It wasn’t until many months later that I began to make sense of that moment. I was dancing around the house to Justin Bieber and thinking about how a song is rarely just a song. Listened to enough times, it somehow starts to snowball, accumulating meaning and feeling until it gains so much momentum it rolls right over any critical response.

Then I got it: the people I met in India were having this same kind of experience. They felt something in the song that I could not because they had years of kindness (given and received) to draw from. I couldn’t understand this because, instead of trying to feel anything, I was watching, assessing, critiquing. The words were just nice ideas to me: sentiments with little lived experience to animate them.

I’d never before considered that the problem of sentimentality could be on the receiving end. But that night it was clear: the problem was me. I was tuned to the wrong frequency. I was trying to understand the thing by stepping back and seeing it from a distance, because that’s what I’d always done. Now it seems obvious that attempting to understand kindness in some detached, intellectual way is to miss the point entirely. 

In “On keeping a notebook” Didion writes, “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” Was this me—an anxious malcontent, a resistant rearranger of things? Is it still me?

That trip to India did change me, though I didn’t feel it until I boarded the flight home. Something was unclenching in me. That year my New Year’s resolution had been to find something to do with all my rage. When I got home, I looked over at my partner Mark and told him I’d figured it out.

“Figured out what?” he said.

“What to do with my rage. I think I’m just gonna let it go,” I said. 

He laughed. “That’s a nice idea.”

I never ended up writing much about the trip because I never felt I could capture the people I met there or what I learned from them in a way that did it all justice. But maybe, in this newsletter, I can at least capture my own failure of spirit.

I spent the holidays watching the original animated Grinch movie over and over with my two year olds. They are obsessed with his dog, Max, and still talk about him every day: “I’m Max. Mama you’re the Grinch. Dada is Cindy Lou Who.” I will not speculate about why I’m the Grinch and Mark is Cindy Lou but we can agree that it feels right. I know that anxious malcontent is still there inside me somewhere. 

I am thinking about whether it’s possible to be a bigger-hearted, less lonely kind of writer. I like that writing is a way of getting perspective. Stepping back and seeing the world from a distance is genuinely useful to me. And I am grateful for other writers whose critiques help me see the world through clearer eyes. (For example, right now I am reading Claire Dederer’s Monsters and it cuts right through bullshit in the very best way.) But I am also aware of the fact that sometimes putting all that critical distance between myself and the world can get in the way of, you know, having actual meaningful connections with other human beings. I guess what I’m saying is, if you invite me to circle up and sing together, I’ll probably give it a shot. 

Yours, 

Mandy