how to change your life, part 2: agnes callard's aspiration

The most important thing for me is Kierkegaard’s insistence that being a totally ordinary human being is an enormous task and a declaration of faith from above, and that when you are lucky enough to be given this one life on earth as a human being, then you need to live it with complete sincerity and full responsibility.

Self-acceptance, was that what I was struggling with, was that what I was longing for? To accept myself as I truly was, my childhood, my story, my mum, my sister, my job history, my shortcomings and my apathy, the whole package. And that was just for starters. And then take responsibility for myself and my actions and my growth. Not blame them on e... See more

...[A]spirants must grow comfortable with a certain quantity of awkward pretense. If someone were to ask you why you enrolled, you would be overreaching if you said that you were moved by the profound beauty of classical music. The truth, which is harder to communicate, is that you have some vague sense of its value, which you hope that some future

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It’s so embarrassing to try and be someone you’re not. It makes you a tryhard, a poseur, a pseud. The problem, of course, is that when you aspire to be better than you are, there’s no other way to do it except by starting. You’re always faking it at the start, always doing things badly. You’re pretending to appreciate things that you can only dimly... See more

It seems to me that their ideas are useful for very different kinds of experiences. One key difference is duration of the experience . L.A. Paul’s model of “transformative experience” works best for situations that have a clean before/after. The after is where you are epistemically transformed, and your self, tastes, preferences, and knowledge migh... See more

If we managed, with heroic unselfconsciousness, to really commit to becoming a writer , an artist , a better person— then we would have to acknowledge that we aren’t that person yet. More than that: Striving means we aren’t that person yet—and we might never become that person. It’s easier to not try—and indulge in the subtle, self-lacerating logic... See more

What Agnes Callard argues—and what writers’ diaries show us—is that we have to keep trying. Write regularly! Don’t give up! Don’t let the doubts stall you, the doubts that say: Who do you think you are? What makes you think you can write? Aren’t you fundamentally unqualified and incapable, in this moment, of writing well? Why are you trying so hard... See more

Doing something badly, she insists, isn’t a sign of unworthiness. Nor is the fear that you are doing it in a way that seems fake, insincere. If you can’t apprehend the value of a writing practice yet, it’s enough to apprehend that there is something there, something desirable and important to you. That’s more than enough to begin. Aspirants, Callar... See more

You’re a beginner. You haven’t become who you want to be—yet. You want to wake up in the mornings to write, but you often don’t manage it. What we learn from Agnes Callard—and Kafka, and Proust—is that here’s nothing wrong with this state of affairs, nothing to be ashamed of, no reason to stop. We can, and should, continue to aspire.

We aspire by doing things, and the things we do change us so that we are able to do the same things, or things of that kind, better and better. In the beginning, we sometimes feel as though we are pretending, play-acting, or otherwise alienated from our own activity. We may see the new value as something we are trying out or trying on rather than s

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