"Toughen Up, Buttercups"
Or, laziness as a form of fascism.
This is part five (the final part, I think) of a series on fostering your own agency. You can read part one here, and part two here, and part three here, and part four here. Go forth and prosper or whatever!!!!
In 2023, I spent a few days as a reporter on the campaign trail with Marianne Williamson, Oprah’s former self-help guru who had decided to run for president on a relatively leftist platform, one similar to Bernie Sanders’s but also infused with a new-age spiritualism. Though it was clear to me that Williamson had no chance of winning her primary, it was also clear that she was dead-serious about her intent—to make people believe that change was possible again.
“I know a lot of people in the world today, in America today, particularly our young people, are feeling very helpless,” Williamson said at one campaign stop. “And I think one of the reasons I’m running for president is because that’s really dangerous.”
Her message seemed to be resonating. Everywhere we went, her supporters would cry and thank her for making them feel hope again.
I asked her: in this age of paralytic ennui and cynicism about our political system, how can we move forward towards a better future?
I expected her to tell me something about becoming emotionally aligned with oneself, or using your angst as fuel for something good. Instead, she basically told me, and everyone else of my generation, to stop complaining so much.
“I wanna say, ‘Toughen up, buttercups—boo hoo,’” she said. “You think it wasn’t hard for the abolitionists? You think they got what they wanted in just a couple of election cycles? Do you think it wasn’t hard for the women suffragettes who were thrown in prison for the crime of marching for suffrage? Don’t you think they were a little traumatized and anxious? You think the people who walked across the bridge at Selma weren’t scared? We are too soft for this revolution.”
But, she said, both things can be true: you can have all these emotions, and act.
“There’s a lot of hours in the day,” she said. “You have to give yourself the hour to cry, and then at a certain point you gotta take a shower and get out there.”
Williamson’s word have stuck with me since. There are still days or weeks or even months in which I feel I cannot do shit—cannot work sufficiently or help others sufficiently or dream a better world sufficiently—because I am too dispirited and feel too worn down; days in which all I can do is process my emotions about, say, the sky being orange from global-warming-accelerated wildfires thousands of miles away. And this emotional processing is important. But, I’ve realized, it is also important to push. Give yourself the hour to cry, and then get out there.
Eventually you need to do the work.
Eventually you need to leave the relationship that’s hurting you.
Eventually you need to make a choice.
***
When I was 15, over a period of a few months, I stole several thousand dollars from my family to buy cocaine for me and my friends.