Bookbear Local: 4/20/26
lightness, codependence, Vermeer
LOVE
A quality I find very attractive in people is a sense of lightness or mobility. It’s the opposite of stagnancy, of being paralyzed and bogged down by your problems: the ability to shrug off the heaviness and keep moving forward. A perpetual willingness to try a new experiment, a different angle. Most of the time when someone tells me they’re trying very hard to solve all of their problems I’m like “It really seems like you’re only exploring 20% of the options available to you.” But it’s like they can’t see the possibilities, or just reject them outright. When someone is truly creative about all areas of their life it strikes me as both cool and very rare.
I read Codependent No More, which Ben has recommended to me a million times. It’s very good! Melody Beattie’s definition of a codependent is “one who has let another person’s behavior affect them and who is obsessed with controlling that other person’s behavior.”
I believe that clutching tightly to a person or thing or forcing my will on any given situation eliminates the possibility of doing anything constructive about that situation, the person, or me. My controlling blocks access to my higher self. It blocks other people’s ability to grow. It stops events from happening naturally. It prevents me from enjoying people or events.
Control is an illusion. It doesn’t work. We cannot control alcoholism. We cannot control anyone’s compulsive behaviors. We cannot (and have no business trying to) control anyone’s emotions, thoughts, or choices. We cannot control the outcome of events. We cannot control life. Some of us can barely control ourselves.
People ultimately do what they want to do. They feel how they want to feel (or how they are feeling); they think what they want to think; they do the things they believe they need to do; and they will change only when they’re ready to change. It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong and we’re right. It doesn’t matter if they’re hurting themselves. It doesn’t matter that we could help them if they’d only listen to and cooperate with us.
Ben’s takeaway from this book is that it is selfish and bad to try to help people and you should stop. (This is a very Ben thing to say, by which I mean somewhat hyperbolic). I think the real problem that I sometimes succumb to is an issue of confusing control with care. People do what they want to do, and one of the easiest ways to escape from accountability for our own lives is to take on responsibility for other people’s actions. Because they need us; because they tell us they need us; because they are self-harming or making questionable decisions; because they are lonely or struggling or sad. Because their suffering makes other people around us suffer, because we love them so dearly. Because we need them. Because we want, very sincerely, for them to be happy. This is all very good and noble—this is also, generally, a way to not confront the question of what we ourselves want and need.
From the book: “I don’t trust people who never get mad. People either get mad or get even,” my friend Sharon George, who is a professional in the mental health field, said.” I’ve found this to be very true: when I abandon myself, certain elements of said Self tend to resurface at inopportune times in amazingly inopportune ways. Have you ever behaved in a way that you would not have previously imagined yourself capable of? In my experience, this tends to not be an issue of self-control so much as me consistently and forcefully negating needs that Absolutely Refuse to be negated. In other words: if you don’t take care of your Parts, your Parts will take care of you. And you may not like their methods.
Having a body is supposed to be fun (I really like this Substack!)
TECHNOLOGY
What’s the best technology that doesn’t exist yet?
Blake’s tweet was interesting to me because I’ve ended up doing the same thing—I specifically talk to ChatGPT about relationship things and Claude about work stuff. Claude’s tone has shifted significantly in the past couple of years—in my personal opinion, he’s become more didactic and less sweet. I miss my guy.
CULTURE
I really enjoyed Ordinary Wear and Tear, a short story by Thomas McGuane. Who is 86!
New Yorker essay on Vermeer’s serene art made in violent times.
Very fun reading about the return of Grimes.
Merve Emre on the role of the critic: “With one eye fixed on the present and the other on the future, the critic preserves the author’s identity not by uncritically celebrating or canonizing his books but by transmitting the generosity—the generous pleasure, generous manners, and generous converse—by which others can learn to read these books as the singular works that they are. The critic models the practice of inquiry and the manner of feeling by which you, the reader, can also become a friend to the text. Of course, just because I am someone’s friend does not mean that you can be persuaded to be his friend too. But our friendships do not resist all attempts at articulation.”
On Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring. Which you can watch here.
Obsessed with this extremely chaotic chronicle of youthful alcoholism “I woke up in the hospital the first night I moved into college, kicking off a 14-year binge-drinking career.” DM me Tara, we both went to Penn!!