Gobble Gobble Jive Turkeys! I’m Thankful to birthday boy Patrick Baker and his family for hosting a paradisic feast yesterday. Also, Thankful to all y’all who shared sweet get well soon notes in response to last week’s edition. Lifted by your spirits, I’m back on my feet and operating at 90%. That other 10% has eluded me for quite a while. It’s worth chasing though. So chase I do.
To wit, before I got sick last week, I gave my doctors all the data they requested and on Monday morning I leaned hard into middle age by visiting not one, but two doctors. I am pleased (read: shocked) to report that, according to extensive blood panels, sonograms, yada yada, I’m a virtual paragon of health and fitness. The cholesterol is a tad high, the vitamin D a tad low. But as my buddy Benjamin quipped, that just means I earned my stripes as a Berliner. Word.
Also, I, Daniel Lazar, have a highly functioning liver. Those evening HIIT liver workouts are paying off. Take THAT science. Booya!
Now, as regular readers may recall, I seek inspiration in new album releases every Friday. This year, I’ve been compiling my favorite albums and as 2023 careens to a close, I’ve been listening to my playlist on repeat. Hey you! If there’s a 2023 album release that has brought you joy or comfort or relief, I would be truly grateful if you would leave a comment or get in touch. Please and thank you.
On a related note, I’ve made the best Christmas playlist on the interwebs. Years in the making. Yeah, that’s right, your He-Bro, your fave Jew-ish substacker boasts the best Christmas playlist. Don’t believe me? Give it a listen. It’s sure to boost your holiday spirits.
My spirits are high because I wrapped up the holiday shopping this week. Christmas and Hanukkah! We should really choose one, especially since we are not religiously wedded to either. My self-inflicted agony over the purchase of an air fryer was utterly preposterous. Which one did I buy? Well, after countless hours of research, I’m not buying an air fryer at all. Ugh. Couldn’t pull the trigger. If this newsletter were true to form and I were truly committed to writing each Friday about what I most obsessed over in a given week, this edition would surely and to my chagrin be about air fryers. But since I’m seeking to build not bore a readership, this morning I’d rather write about this…
So I was thinking this week about that elusive 10% and was reminded of a podcast I listened to this summer. It was Dan Harris’ interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn on the 10% Happier podcast. While shopping for my family, I had the idea to stuff the stockings of my ten dearest loved ones with Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living. I haven’t read it since high school, when it was gifted to me by my high school crush who was much (read: way too much, aka criminally) older and wiser than me. I was reminded this week how when I went to college, I posted in the little study nook in my dorm room a passage of a Pablo Neruda poem that Kabat-Zinn quoted in Full Catastrophe Living:
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.
I’m not sure it quieted my mind. But I do think I was once more quiet and focused. I was once more focused; I’m not sure I was more quiet. The mystic chords of memory don’t suit me so well in this matter.
But while reflecting on my late teens and thinking about Kabat-Zinn and Neruda and the elusive other 10% this week, I was reminded of how intensely I wanted to be liked back then.
Back then?
This week I was confronted, once again, with my pathological drive to be liked. By everyone. All the time.
Will you please like me? Na? Okey. I mean, I get it. Me either.
What motivates my drive to be liked? Going back to my little dorm room study nook, back to that one year I was a declared psychology major, I remember reading Karen Horney. I mean, how could I forget? I was 18 and she was Dr. Horney.
A German psychologist who trained in Berlin and practiced in Chicago, Horney studied how neuroses develop to seek security as adaptive strategies to alleviate anxiety. She theorized that in our efforts to navigate our anxieties we move either toward people, against people, or away from people. Her psychoanalytic work explored how our neurotic needs are shaped by early relationships, particularly with parents, and influence how we interact with others throughout our lives.
Now, I’m not gonna get into my parental relationships this morning. Thanks no thanks. But I’ll tell ya this: I move toward people. I want people to like me.
But this week, I have been thinking about what it means to me to be liked, especially in light of my neuroses, self-criticism, and general funkiness.
Listen, I’m freaky and funky by design and by choice. I’m not easy. I’m more late Miles than early Duke. I’m a pineapple and anchovy pizza who wants everyone to enjoy a slice. I’m the tongue taco.
Never wanting to be everyone’s cup of tea, I’m Malort. And I prefer it this way.
Nevertheless, I want everyone to dig me.
The psychotherapist Albert Ellis impressed upon his patients that it’s pathological to want to be liked by everybody all the time. But it must be yet more pathological to want to be universally liked with full knowledge that one is thoroughly unlikeable.
This week, in the moments between teaching and parenting and shopping, I created some space to reflect on my need to be liked. I had the idea that maybe I’ve been all wrong about the framing of the pathology. Perhaps I don’t want to be liked per se. It might not be that simple or specific. Perhaps it’s more that I want to be accepted. Respected. Heard. Embraced. It may well be that above all, I just want to be included.
I’m Thankful for so much this year. My health. My gingered roommates. My supportive friends and family. My curious students. I’m thankful that enough people are willing to move towards my freaky funkiness. To create space for me. To walk with me. To make me feel like I’m part of something, anything, outside of my head.
But these are just the scrawlings of a funky tongue taco with a wicked hangover and a miraculously healthy liver.
Gobble Gobble,
DL
I’m learning how rituals that mark time matter to me. So this year, I am carving out an hour or so on Friday to sit quietly before my family wakes to write about what I obsessed about that week. If you enjoy this weekly reflection, please subscribe so I can send it to you every Friday.
Respected Heard Embraced
vs liked is the most admirable focus to achieve if non judgemental...an loving old aunts theory.
Congrats on good health...take charge of your liver health🍻🥃🥃🤗
R