OBSERVATIONS & OTHER ACCIDENTS

On the obsession with being okay.

I love that I may sometimes seem to contradict myself — especially in my writing. It’s just that I think a lot about things, and I like to see them from as many perspectives as possible. I don’t believe in a single absolute truth, so I kind of change my mind whenever I find a new point of view. I’m a Gemini, Libra rising, which means I think, evaluate, and rationalise — but I also value balance and justice.

This is my way of explaining what I do when people ask me what I do in life — a question I dislike, because what I do doesn’t define me entirely, and I do many other things that shape who I am. I tell them I write, and mostly I write about human behaviour, even for Vogue, where I have been contributing for six years. My passion has always been fashion; ever since I was a child, reading Madame Figaro at my grandmother’s house. Yet the human mind — perhaps because mine is restless, and because I spend so much time in it — has always fascinated me.

Naturally, this aptitude for writing about human behaviour means I also spend a lot of time trying to work through my own questions — which, of course, are still there. If there’s one thing I really enjoy, it’s talking with my therapist. If there’s another, it’s discussing these questions with my boyfriend — his, mine, and ours. With my sisters, we sometimes spend hours digging into issues — perhaps generational, perhaps just ours — and yes, we come out a little crazy. This is very much part of who I am.

But I have noticed something: this whole self-knowledge thing, this desire to “work on ourselves,” can sometimes feel a little too much. While we are human, we are imperfect. We are not gods, and therefore we do not have to know everything — about ourselves, or about life. The desire to reach behavioural “perfection,” or to live in a constant state of happiness and self-acceptance, can border on egocentrism — something very Buddhist in a way, because it turns inward, detached from everything happening in the world and beyond ourselves.

I have always loved the symbolism of Yin and Yang. For me, it represents many things: where there is light, there is always darkness, and vice versa. And we are that too. As I often tell my people in discussions: “If you want me always happy, better go to the circus and hire a clown.”

Of course, there are aspects of personality shaped by, let’s call it life events, that can really damage relationships, ourselves, and our lives. There are traits we must actively work to improve or even fight against, running the risk of being betrayed by them forever. But we do not have to strive for perfection — who are we in this ginormous universe to want to achieve perfection?

Albert Einstein once said that “there is nothing known as ‘perfect‘—and he was right. Nothing will ever be perfect. 

The obsession with therapy — and I won’t even touch on holistic extremes, because then it truly loses all sense — can be, at times, deeply egotistical and narcissistic (so in vogue now), entirely focused on oneself and the pursuit of self-perfection — as if it actually existed.

One thing is wanting to live a slightly more peaceful life in a world that is not for the faint-hearted; another is letting that become an obsession, a life goal.