Wanna know one of my secret weapons against shame?
It works like a charm.
And I almost never see it discussed.
It’s this.
Low expectations.
Wait what?
Let me explain.
I think, in the Western world — though this phenomenon is not unique to the West, I think it is particularly salient here — people are constantly fed a steady stream of “the myth of human perfectibility.”
I think it comes from Christianity — or the way Christianity has become distorted, depending on whom you ask — with all its obsession with goodness and purity and achieving salvation from our natural state of ‘sinfulness’.
The idea that the human being ought to be perfected, and that we can achieve this through doing enough of the right things, or believing enough in the right things… is one to question.
When you think perfection/purity is attainable, and that it must be attained by doing/believing “correctly,” life is a constant stressful battle.
Because we will always run into our own shortcomings, weaknesses, and failure.
No human being — save for psychopaths or narcissists — is immune from the constant experience of facing all that is imperfect about us.
But I have a very different view of humanity, and therefore myself.
I take it for granted that I’m not that great.
There are big parts of me that are insecure, angry, entitled, hypocritical, craven, selfish, resentful, greedy, and just plain stupid.
(Before you say “Simone don’t call yourself stupid!,” here’s a simple but good example: have I drunk-driven? Yes. Fucking stupid. I don’t do it anymore but I do other, maybe equally stupid things from time to time.)
And these parts of me are not going away no matter how hard I try because I am human.
Therefore, I have created, and will continue to create scenarios in which I’m the idiot, I’m the weak link, and I’m the cause of pain for myself and others.
If I forget or deny these aspects of myself for a long time, something will happen in life that remind me and humble me.
And I say NONE of this with shame, or out of self-hatred or smallness.
Humans are profoundly paradoxical. At the same time that I am all these unpleasant things, I am also brilliant, generous, kind, wise, delightful, an awe-inspiring spark of unspeakable love and beauty.
I believe in ALL OF THE ABOVE at the same time.
See? Paradox. Humans contain the entire mind-boggling complexity of the universe. That’s what’s so wonderful and terrible about us.
But because I embrace the full spectrum of the paradox of humanity, I am not surprised by all the shitty parts of me, and my life.
I have thought, felt, and done things in the past that are so unwise, short-sighted, immature, and/or hateful that they created enormous shame for myself which I’ve never talked about with any other human being, let alone the public.
The understanding that this is not a unique thing that is happening to ME and ME only, and that the searing burn of facing one’s own profound shortcoming is a universal HUMAN experience, is what allowed me to let go of the shame.
This is how low expectations (a.k.a. “i was never supposed to be that great anyway”) freed me.
Because shame says “YOU are bad.”
And the truth is, being human just includes a lot that feels really bad. Even that person who you think is so perfect and has all their shit together and just glides through life… has their own share of unspeakable pain about their own fallibility and shortcomings that you’ll never know about.
It’s not personal.
That is enormously important to know.
I’m not above profoundly hurting other people. Because that’s a feature of being human.
I’m not above humiliating, dirt-in-my-teeth failure. Because that’s a feature of being human.
I’m not above making stupendously bad decisions — like, again and again. Because that’s a feature of being human. (There’s never, ever a point in which you permanently graduate from that for as long as you’re alive.)
These are somber, sobering truths. But it’s much better to contend with somber, sobering truths than the life-annihilating lie of shame.
Also, it is vitally important to remind myself — aggressively and vigorously sometimes — of the full weight of the OPPOSITE truth, of my goodness, beauty, brilliance, preciousness, etc.
I do this specifically and insistently.
I seek out people and spaces that make it easy for me to embody that awareness.
If you don’t balance both ends of the paradox, not only do you just get depressed, you also move away from the fundamental truth of your existence.
Another important point: the drama of dealing with shame is intensified when you’re neurodivergent, sensitive, struggle with mental health, and/or have some kind of circumstance/identity that lands you in the margins of society (like being poor or trans, etc).
Though no one is immune to the pain of Being Alive While Imperfect, it certainly is easier to pad yourself against the full awareness or full consequences of your “crunchy” sides when you have a lot of unearned advantages. (Like… for example, making mistakes while being poor and Black is a lot more ‘expensive’ than making mistakes when you’re wealthy and white. Obviously.)
That’s another thing to factor in when you’re dealing with shame. There are structural, systemic forces that determine how much “raw material” of shit you’re given to work through.
I am a vagina-owner, a person of color and descendant of colonized people, and have an ADHD brain that is prone to anxiety and depression. That means I have a lot of easy shame-triggers.
It’s like, I got the “harder” level of the same video game that a lot of other people got. But I am acutely aware that also, many many other people have to play way, way harder levels because they don’t have the privileges i do.
I’m posting this because recently, I’ve been talking to some folks about the feeling of overwhelming shame they feel about their financial circumstances.
It’s not just the stress and grief of dealing with financial precariousness. It’s the shame of “IT’S MY FAULT, I BROUGHT THIS UPON MYSELF, I SHOULD HAVE ____ AND SHOULDN’T HAVE ____, HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID.”
That’s what really kills.
But, I offer you… why should you have “known”? Why should you have “done better”?
You are not superhuman or God. You do not have perfect foresight, knowledge or willpower. You do not have infinite reserves of energy, creativity and wisdom. NO ONE DOES. Those features don’t come installed in the human package.
You are fallible and the world isn’t necessarily set up to help everyone feel safe and secure. In fact, many would argue that it’s actively rigged to fuck a lot of people over.
It’s not you. It’s not you. It’s not you.
At least, it’s not uniquely you.
Having this awareness doesn’t solve everything. But it certainly helps to lighten the emotional load. And sometimes, that counts for a lot.
Because shame sucks.
And you deserve to have your load lightened.
I don’t even think it’s technically true to say that everyone is doing their best, and therefore YOU were doing your best…
But I also think NOT always having the capacity to “do your best” IS part of us trying to do our best.
Life is hard.
You deserve grace.
You deserve the most compassionate and affirming narratives about the painful stuff in your life.
You deserve infinite second chances.
You deserve to feel like your existence is deeply good and that you matter profoundly.
Let me first say that I don’t think avoiding depression is just a matter of having the right mindset and making the right choices.
Sometimes you can make a 200% effort to do your best to do the “right” things and still be at the mercy of relentlessly cruel brain chemicals.
I think it is both inaccurate, unscientific and unkind to suggest that you can just mindset and action your way out of depression.
Not only that, but external circumstances matter.
To be sure, positive external circumstances can’t 100% control depression. But it sure as hell helps when you’re in a physically comfortable environment, don’t have to worry about your own survival, have disposable income (so you can take a vacation to a warmer place or get a massage or hire a cleaner if that would be supportive) and are surrounded by people who love you and support you unconditionally.
Many of these aren’t only available to all.
So what I’m about to say isn’t some kind of prescriptive guide of what you “should” do to “beat depression”.
I’m way too humble about the reality of brains. Mine in particular. Even at my most upbeat, happy and energetic (which I often am), I always feel at a razor’s edge from mental illness because I am extremely sensitive and melancholy by nature.
So this is just one story of someone who is experiencing a dark season of life, and deduce that certain things have helped her to avoid depression this time.
The biggest thing for me has been this.
The way to cope with losing your sense of purpose, direction and ambition is to find out who you are outside of those things.
Because we humans are so much more than our so-called “purpose,” “direction” and “ambition” — as defined in an individualistic and capitalist sense (as they usually are.)
And this is a place of liberation.
When I don’t have some kind of grand “purpose in the world”, my purpose is to exist today.
To be alive. To breathe. To make my bed.
To order a sandwich and eat it. To notice snowflakes falling softly on trees.
To send memes to my bestie to make her laugh.
To cuddle with my sweetheart. To feel my emotions, to cry, to take walks, to read poems.
This is actually what real life mostly consists of. Our real purpose is to be alive, and here we are, beautifully and perfectly fulfilling it.
When I’ve lost connection to a capitalist-individualist sense of direction, then I get to…
… exist without direction, which gives me a great freedom.
Children don’t need direction to play. They just follow their own impulses (which often subvert adult “directions”) and have the best time.
Artists don’t need direction to create. Like, nobody was telling Picasso “mix this color with that color and put a brushstroke HERE.” Artists respond, once again, to their own inner creative impulse — moment by moment. Not unlike play.
When I no longer have ambition, I get to be free.
Free from the prison of my worldly identity and pursuits. Because, no matter how much value I find in work, I know I’m so much more than that.
I’m an animal. I am a dream-spark of my ancestors. I’m a river of sexual energy. I’m quantum potential in a meatsuit. I am one with soil, sap and sky. I am a tiny node in the sacred unbroken web of living beings.
All of these things are so much bigger and truer and deeper than anything I can do with “ambition.”
Let me be clear…
This doesn’t mean it’s been easy and delightful for me. It hasn’t.
Almost everyday is phenomenally uncomfortable and I’ll be VERY glad when some semblance of purpose, direction and ambition return to me. (And they will. Because life consists of cycles.)
But everything I’ve just mentioned has been the difference between “oh fuck, my life is just falling apart” and “I’m undergoing vitally important spiritual journey — one that is critical for my ability to come home to my true nature.”
This awareness has reminded me again and again… that shedding isn’t a loss.
It’s a revelation.
Disintegration isn’t a disaster.
It’s a cleansing.
“Unmoored” isn’t “lost”.
It’s a liberation.
And contrary to how it feels sometimes, the universe isn’t here to just fuck you.
When there is a night, it leads to day.
When there is a winter, it leads to spring.
When there is an uphill, there is a downhill.
Everything is unfolding for a reason, and there is a great unseen benevolent loving order behind it all.
This isn’t some kind of objective truth I’m proclaiming, but a personal belief I hold.
On purpose. By choice.
Deep rigorous optimism in the goodness of the universe is as close to something gets to a religious belief for me.
It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.
Because we live in a universe that loves us. And how I know that is that I AM a microcosm of the universe, and I AM love.
And that is how, despite a ton of discomfort, I have not been depressed.
This time.
Spoken as someone who will never hesitate to go out and get some prescription drugs if I feel like that would be supportive.
I was able to see myself clearly, maybe for the first time, during my sabbatical.
It wasn’t pretty.
—
I think it was all the time and space I had to think.
And the comparative level of maturity that I’d developed over time to be able to hold myself with unconditional self-love and self-respect.
It is only with unconditional self-love and self-respect that one could see oneself clearly enough.
That is the only way you can be safe without the armor of stories and identities one has built around oneself out of defensiveness and fear.
Otherwise the terrain is too fraught, too risky.
One could get eaten by the sharks of shame.
One could get buried under an avalanche of self-loathing.
—
In sabbatical, I spent a lot of time with the teachings of Zen masters.
Ones that had guns pointed at them. That had willingly spent time in prisons. That had taken vows of poverty. That had risked their lives for the oppressed. That had recited the sutras and spent thousands of hours in meditation and then actually flexed the power of their titanium-grade spiritual backbone in real life.
If only people knew what “mindfulness” is really capable of in Mahayana Buddhism.
It was actually breathtaking, thinking about how green and shallow I have been in comparison.
(What’s more breathtaking was how unaware I had been of that fact.)
What an impudent little poseur I had been, thinking that I was some kind of hot shit, doing something profound, changing the world!
I also saw the limitations of my personal character with brutal clarity.
My irascibility. My imperiousness. The sloppy command over the formidable instrument of my own mind that led to so much ‘leak’.
This was all felt, once again, with zero unkindness toward myself.
Rather, I felt like a child who scaled the neighborhood hill, proudly planted the flag I’d painted at home, then looked up to discover Everest.
The ferocity of my feeling was not hatred against the version of myself who climbed the little hill, but a fire that was a love of climbing.
I saw higher.
Infinitely higher.
I was humbled.
It felt terrible.
And deeply, deeply cleansing.
—
I had read the excerpt of Alexei Navalny’s memoir, which sent me down a rabbit hole of reading the epistles of Occupied Korea’s own freedom fighters on death row.
My husband argued with me. “I don’t believe for a second he actually wrote that stuff from prison in the Arctic. How’d he get it out?”
But it actually didn’t matter to me whether he really did write those words in prison.
There were plenty of others before him, and there will be others after him. In Russia. Turkey. Iran. Both Koreas. Palestine.
What mattered to me was the example of fierce moral clarity and courage that slice through the haze of willful oblivion, selfishness and greed that cloud our collective vision. The dry Russian wit — in the midst of it all!! — was just a heartrending cherry on top. (He cracks jokes with his prison guards!)
What a man.
—
Navalny died for a free Russia.
“What are you willing to die for?”
That is a horrible, distasteful, inhumane question.
Because who wants to die?
I do not romanticize situations where that question becomes necessary.
In any universe, I am sure Mr. Navalny would have preferred to be alive, at home, reading his books, bickering with his wife and playing with his grandchildren. It is peace that ought to be prized and romanticized, not authoritarianism, not strife, not war.
And for most of us who are lucky enough to only have to ever face much, much smaller stakes, this question becomes useful insofar as it leading us to the opposite question.
In a world where too many people are forced to risk bodily harm and death to fight for their own dignity, those of us who have the luxury of not having to do that can ask ourselves: “what we are willing to live for?”
Whatever the answer, we can do the living with our full throats and bellies.
If all there is to fear is life — ah, life! — it really cannot be that bad.
We can slash fear and dance on.
Bravely.
—
I have not accomplished much of anything in life. (I recently had this thought while examining the resume of J.D. Vance. That man has done nothing of consequence in his life except write what used to be evaluated as a decent book. Then I realized — well, hah, neither have I, I guess. At least one of us isn’t a heartbeat away from the Presidency.)
I’m not qualified to do much of anything.
I’d be pretty useless in a nuclear apocalypse. I do not know how to hunt, or grow food, or treat the sick, or build shelter.
I don’t know much of anything. (That is truly not false modesty, and you will find out how that’s true if you ever had me on your team while playing Trivial Pursuit).
My qualification for getting up and keeping going is that I am alive, I have a heartbeat, and there is something moving inside me that wants to be expressed.
The difference between when I was younger and now is that, today, I truly believe that that is good enough.
This year, I did something I’ve never done before.
Declare a sabbatical without an end date, knowing that the end date might be quite far away.
It started in the summer.
And one of the things I noticed in the beginning was that I was feeling a profound fatigue around short-form content.
Weary to my bone of carousels and reels, emails and podcasts, being relentlessly mined for dopamine, and the illusion of having done something useful with one’s mind just floating in a sea of quickly churned out, and equally quickly forgotten output.
So, when I logged off from the world, it wasn’t even out of some lofty principle.
I was just following what I instinctively yearned for — the way a shark can smell blood from miles away, the way pregnant women are said to crave the food that contains the nutrition that their gestating fetuses need.
I needed words cooked slowly.
Slooooowly.
Perhaps even agonizingly slowly (I once had a friend who was a novelist. The time it took to birth a novel — agonizing indeed.)
To make up for the years I spent immersed in words, images and videos that took only minutes, or hours, to make. The fast food of creativity.
So I dove into a months-long marathon of doing almost nothing but reading novels.
More importantly, I’d traveled to the insides of extraordinary minds. Minds that were fully awake to the world, sensate equally to its brutality and its beauty.
Poverty.
War.
Partition.
Genocide.
Slavery.
The endless re-enactment of hatred and trauma.
And, threading through the midst of it all, impossibly — courage, love, kindness, tenderness, art, humanity.
These minds grabbed the thorniest, most uncomfortable questions of humanity by the throat, and stared into its eyes and refusing to look away, courting madness and fury.
These novels did not give me answers.
They did not prescribe a “how to” for how I ought to live the next chapter of my life, nor how to respond to a catastrophic world with my sanity and conscience intact — both of which I was subconsciously looking for.
But what they did, I feel, was restore my humanity.
They connected me back to the person I am, and always have been, outside of the professional roles I play.
Simone who looks. and keeps looking.
Simone who thinks and asks questions.
Simone who does not tire of searching.
That Simone is the most authentic Simone there is, and any identity of mine that is even a little bit more stable, poised, and reassuring than that is a lie.
These books also punctured giant gaping holes in the comfort of my former intellectual and ethical indolence. I found myself interrogating:
Why was I so content to communicate to my people through tiny Instagram squares and minutes-long videos?
Why was I so content to consume the same from others, and call it “learning” or “connection”?
What happened that I had become so comfortable conflating learning with entertainment, conversation with sound bites of conversation, and the sacred materiality of human togetherness with doing a bunch of clicking and swiping?
Had my thinking become so at ease with the conformity and shallowness that commerciality dictates, that I felt little inner tension with doing just that for years and years?
“If you’re ever going to go back to work, do it different,” I heard from within.
I need space where my thoughts can really stretch out without having to be cut up into squares.
I need space where my friends can read, and we can talk to each other without the interruption of constantly having to scroll left, and blinking notifications left and right.
So here we are.
An old-timey, 2006-style blog.
A blog is not the answer.
But it is a place where we can ask a hell of a lot of good questions.
She is a luminous writer. And my teacher on all things antisemitism.
She just collaborated with an illustrator to bring her (previously very off-social media, and enormously influential) writing us a series of essays on building resistance to antisemitism within the context of organizing for Palestine.
Learn how to tell them apart, and you’ll save yourself massive amounts of trouble.
Tier 1. People who don’t like you and have no intention of taking the risk of actually relating to you
Think: behind-your-back gossipers, or people who leave nasty comments about celebs whom they have ZERO chance of meeting in person. This is a true hater, whose hating is bolstered by the convenience of extremely low accountability, and never having to confront the other’s humanity. People who feel truly whole and well in their lives do not do this. What they need to work out doesn’t involve YOU. It involves them getting a therapist. Action step: tune them out. Send them love and healing. Protect your energy.
Tier 2. People who have feedback and THINK they’re relating to you, but are actually making demands.
Relating starts with the genuine willingness to meet the other person where they are, and understand them as they would wish to be understood. Any message where what they’re really saying is “I don’t like you or what you are doing. Please submit to to my demand for you to change or do something differently so that you can make me comfortable”, there is no relating, just an attempt to control. There is also no willingness to take responsibility for their own experience.
Action step: if they’re like, an online rando, ignore, let that shit bounce off of your force field, and move gingerly past them.
If they’re someone who is actually in your life, and maybe even close to you, or maybe even someone you love (it happens! Sometimes we do it to people we love, too!), and depending on your desire snd capacity, you may decide to hold loving space for them to “let them be” and do their thing without giving into them.
Easier said than done, I know.
Or sometimes, you gotta cut that person out of your life. There is too much nuance for me to give blanket advice regardless of context. You gotta exercise your discernment from a place of self-love and self-respect.
Tier 3. People who have uncomfortable feedback and come to you with the willingness to truly relate.
How you know this is the case: they are taking responsibility for their stuff. There is no dumping-and-demanding. There’s no “you made me feel/do ____ therefore you should ____.”
And there is respect, openness and possibility in the conversation, even if it is a difficult one.… and the genuine efforts to get to know you where you are, and be known for where they are.
Action step: Whenever this happens, I do everything possible to be available for what they are bringing me — even when it bruises my ego or makes me confront stuff I’d rather avoid. ESPECIALLY when, because that’s when learning and deepening happen.
The desired conclusion is not “everyone holding hands and singing kumbaya,” but people moving closer to their respective truths, and a more authentic relationship between the two parties. Sometimes that results in “happy endings.” Not always. And that’s okay.
(remember, this is just me sharing what I do in hopes it may help to inspire your own discernment. This is NOT a prescription for all of humanity)
Many of us try to prove or earn our worthiness by people-pleasing those in tiers 1 and 2. This is called fawning.
This is not only exhausting and unpleasant, but guaranteed to fail. You cannot earn your worthiness by performing for others’ good opinion, because (1) you do not have power over others’ thoughts, and (2) your worthiness is not dependent on what is happening inside another’s brain and nervous system.
Your worthiness is inherent, infinite, and non-negotiable.
You are an important being that is worthy of being cherished, full stop. You are not for everyone, and you are not responsible for everyone’s comfort, full stop.
Respect for yourself, your time, and energy is where responsible community stewardship begins.
Knowing this deeply is how we unlock our greatest potential for accountability.
