What If This Were Enough?: Essays

by Heather Havrilesky

Even after we mature into adults, even after we experience heartbreak and nagging doubts and disappointments untold, life is still supposed to be dominated by sunshine and big hugs and warm smiles, lathered up into a bubbly storm of upbeat nothingness. Everything must be improving. If things are bad, they are always about to get better. Reluctance to see it that way will be encountered as willful misery. You must be living life to its fullest, always. Even when you are suffering, you are learning important lessons. You are making memories. You are doing this for the experience, which is irreplaceable. Every day is a gift. You are not permitted to sigh deeply, or roll your eyes, or linger skeptically on the sidelines. You are not allowed a little space to be lukewarm, or resigned, or judgmental, or exhausted. Sadness is weak. If you’re feeling bad, you must be making bad choices. It’s time to make better ones.

After a while, it’s impossible not to slip into a dissociative trance, in which you surrender to the allure of a perpetual, trivial nowhereland, nestled somewhere between “15 Cats That You Don’t Want to Mess With” and “44 Hong Kong Movie Subtitles Gone Wrong.”

Fear means we are on our way somewhere important. Anxiety means that greatness will be here soon. Greed is good because it keeps you restless and hungry.

Suddenly, we found ourselves wondering: Does the world even feel real to powerful men? How else do two world leaders with nuclear weapons capable of murdering millions trade juvenile insults on Twitter like kids battling over a video game?