unbidden

[…] From my early 20s, there are pages trying to convince myself that friendship, which I had, could be as valuable as romantic love, which I didn’t. (Andrew Sullivan: “If love is about the bliss of primal unfreedom, friendship is about the complicated enjoyment of human autonomy.”) […] Ultimately, when I was no longer so preoccupied with finding romantic love, my shift toward looking more closely at my other relationships is mirrored in my transcriptions: Vivian Gornick on her relationship with her mother; Durga Chew-Bose on the rapturous, fresh intimacy that I miss now.

[…] Thrumming beneath the pages is a shifting self-image. When I read them, I recognize the past me who saw herself in these quotes, but I don’t roll my eyes at her. With others’ words as intermediaries, the harsh light of hindsight softens. If keeping a journal would be a way to look in the mirror and make an honest appraisal of myself, keeping a commonplace book is more like looking at myself out of the corner of my eye.

It’s an admittedly different approach from my generation’s inclination toward full-frontal accountability. Daily diary apps and self-improvement podcasts and confessional Instagram stories evince a belief that to grow as a person you have to be entirely, unflinchingly forthcoming. But I couldn’t catalog my flaws without flinching. And I don’t think I need to. That’s part of the point of reading, I think: When I find myself too earnest, too impatient, too much, I can be in conversation with other minds instead. Keeping a commonplace book feels like a kinder way to grow, by wrestling with the articulations of others in the open as I hopefully adjust myself within. »