This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

by Tabitha Carvan

But motherhood doesn’t have a moment of impact. Instead, you’re stuck in an interminable holding pattern, circling the airport and dumping fuel. And the in-flight entertainment is broken. It just goes on and on, tediously. I was praying for something to hit me, just to break up the monotony.

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss—an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.—is sure to be noticed.”

The “shattering” is what the writer Sarah Manguso calls it in her Harper’s essay about writing and mothering: the “disintegration of the self, after which the original form is quite gone.”

“Beating oneself up for what really gets you excited, it’s a masculine approach to women’s experiences,” Emma says. “We have been acculturated to do it to ourselves.”

I realize that I too am tired of seeming. It’s exhausting. I’m tired of always trying to stay one step ahead of perceived criticism. I’m tired of the second-guessing, the diagnosing, the explaining, the hiding, the talking about what it all means.

But it’s hard to cultivate a coherent sense of who you are when it’s built on how you seem. The foundations are too shifting.

Women mature out of their pleasures. Men, on the other hand, get to hang on to theirs, turning them into lifelong passions, or even better, a career. Then they get to make cute jokes about how they never grew up.

There are no such things as “girl toys” and “boy toys,” but when a girl plays, it’s somehow different. A boy does what he does because he has a passion, he follows his heart. It’s a worthy pursuit, with inherent, universal, and lasting value, so we’d better support and protect it. When a girl does what she does, it’s merely the by-product of outside forces. She’s being manipulated into having inauthentic, disposable feelings for something with dubious appeal. Boys can enjoy play for a lifetime; girls are expected to mature out of it. It passes, just like their fads.

After researching her book on burnout, she reported that “skincare routines, pedicures, sweet treats, elaborate vacations, even massages—none of it feels as good as actually figuring out something you like to do, and then doing it as if no one was watching, and no one ever will, and it will never, ever find a place on your résumé.”

Benedict Cumberbatch can’t change your life, you see. But finding your thing, and loving it, whatever it is—well, maybe that can.

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.” So says Mary Oliver in her poem “Don’t Hesitate.”

And she says there are sources of joy all around us, you just need to embrace them: “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” If you tend to that intriguing flicker of This feels good or I want that, it becomes a flame, bright enough to light your way down previously darkened paths. It’s hard to see the final destination when you take the first step, but you’ll get there: This feels like me.

.. It’s hard to see the final destination when you take the first step, but you’ll get there: This feels like me.