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Self-optimisation challenges the idea that we are trapped in our own bodies – instead, our bodies can be upgraded like smartphones, if we just commit to the change.
It strikes me that what we should be seeking is not self-care, but self-respect. Dignity and faith in ourselves which is more than skin-deep. Something that does not offer a dream catcher – a false protection against ambivalence or trouble – but that seeks a sense of peace and private reconciliation.
‘She said that inside her she had a frantumaglia, a jumble of fragments … It was a word for disquiet not otherwise definable, it referred to a miscellaneous crowd of things in her head, debris in a muddy water of the brain.’
One of the greatest ironies of womanhood is that the more you resist your fragments, the more they turn into splinters and pierce you.
I realised I had fallen into a circular trap: I was spending more time seeking happiness in the efficiency of my work than I was in the work itself.
