Either/Or

by Elif Batuman

How was a therapist going to help me see things more clearly, when he didn’t know any of these people, and couldn’t know anything other than what was told to him, by me: a person who apparently didn’t see things clearly?

turned out that writing what you were already thinking about wasn’t creative, or even writing. It was “navel-gazing.” To be obsessed by your own life experience was childish, egotistical, unartistic, and worthy of contempt.

It was the golden time of year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick façades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I seem always to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music? —

Yes

In the end, I thought the most likely explanation was that most of the people in the world just didn’t know they were allowed not to have kids. Either that, or they were too unimaginative to think of anything else to do, or too beaten-down to do whatever it was they thought of. That had been a big reason why I had wanted so much to get into Harvard: I’d been sure it would be full of fortunate, resourceful, courageous people who had some better-conceived plan for life that I could learn about.