jackb
‘self-care’ and the language of wellbeing
in response to this article about jonny sun and lin manuel-miranda’s book ‘gmorning gnight’
the article i linked above really aired out some of the more egregious offenders on this topic, so i won’t talk about gmorning gnight or the cretins responsible for creating it. that said, i’ll talk about rupi kaur even though the other writer, alex nichols, did, because her work is a good entry point into the problems i’m going to talk about.
rupi kaur is inane in the purest sense of the word. she writes (or steals) her poetry, which rarely consists of more than 20 words as best as i can tell, and pairs it with tangentially related line art. rupi kaur is bad because her poetry, when intelligible, seems to exist purely to evoke a hollow sense of warmth in the reader. the outcome of reading a page from ‘milk and honey’ might be some sense of identification, but it is and can only ever be shallow, because kaur’s poetry never touches on anything beyond the superficial. you read 10 words in a black typewriter font on a white or off-white page, and then look at the accompanying line art that looks like it was copied straight off the shoulder or wrist of the worst kind of girl in your english class. kaur makes picture books for the eternal adolescent; her verses reassure you that your feelings are big and deep without actually plumbing those depths. the subject matter pays lip service to the content of adult life, but the themes are invariably juvenile. readers who are somehow able to engage with it sincerely feel validated in their emotions, and nothing more is asked of them. it’s the least challenging thing you could possibly write. it is exclusively aesthetic.
perhaps i’m being overly harsh, and i just don’t understand her poetry, or what her mission is as a poet, particularly as a brown poet. in an interview with vice, kaur shared a bit about why she does what she does:
shah: there’s this idea that your poetry is a more democratic format, but that sometimes has its own baggage—the whole plagiarism thing, for example. a woman of colour, nayyirah waheed, accused you of plagiarism. how did you deal with all of that? it’s hard. especially because you know you both come from communities that deal with a lot. and the reason that both of you are writing is because you’re trying to overcome that pain. It’s really sad that someone got so hurt. all those things are so real, and that’s what makes it so complicated.
i also feel that plagiarism is such a heavy, loaded word—it can also silence people. people who would not be writing otherwise. me using a couple of words that the other person also uses, doesn’t equal plagiarism. if another brown girl with the same last name wants to write about feminism and what it is to be an immigrant, it’s like me saying “you’re copying me.” we’re living in a world where me and so many other artists are writing about similar topics is just a reflection of our times.
if i’m being harsh, let it be known that vice was softballing throughout this interview, which is as much about instagram as it is about poetry. “the whole plagiarism thing” is how they subtly hand-wave waheed’s serious accusation.
kaur writes for feminism, and for decolonization, huge topics with decades of history and nuance to pull from. when asked about the claims of plagiarism, she just says that it’s “really sad that someone got so hurt”, and then talks about how the accusation has made her feel bad. the next question:
shah: it must be weird, because you’ve got all the recognition for it, but there could be a hundred other people doing it. is it hard to keep it real? do i feel guilty—why did i get all this success, and the other person didn’t? for sure. i wish the world was fair.
asked point-blank why ‘milk and honey’ has the success that it does, kaur’s response is easily substituted for ‘idk lol but it sucks not everybody can be as valid as i am. it’s so unfair.’ i’ll admit it can be difficult to view one’s success objectively and try to diagnose the reason for it. i’ll also admit that my reading of this interview is, shall we say, uncharitable. but the larger point is that kaur offers nothing in the way of insight into her work when asked. she doesn’t know, she can’t explain. she doesn’t even take issue with the idea that any of a vast number of social media posts or notebook doodles could be perfect substitutions for her poetry. she just got lucky.
i happen to think it’s deeper than that. i’ve already spent more time on her than i meant to, so i’ll just say this: rupi kaur is, apparently accidentally, the distillation of what’s wrong with how we approach our emotional and psychological health. the key thing here is superficiality; a fixation on pretty words rather than meaning.
i think it used to be the case that when people talked about your wellbeing, they just meant the physical health of your body. i say i think, because a revolution in our understanding of wellness and health was in full swing by the time i got old enough to really think deeply about anything.
i attended a boarding school for most of high school, and a three-year one at that, so most of the student body was at their third school in as many years by the time they became sophomores. part of our orientation activities included learning about how to adjust to a new environment, and they taught us the basics of depression and how to keep an eye on each other to spot it. my gym class (hilariously entitled ‘moving and learning’) was, on paper, entirely about holistic wellness as opposed to just making sure we were capable of running a mile and shooting hoops. we had readings and discussions that dealt with maintaining ourselves in each of the different spheres of health, not just the physical. notably, they included your emotional and spiritual wellbeing.
this is the case online too. mental health as opposed to solely physical health has exploded in public conversation. the prevailing opinion you’ll see online today is that most if not every person should see a therapist. joker, a recent blockbuster, was essentially about the horrors of life without access specifically to good mental healthcare. i’ve grown up in a world where the health of your person - as opposed to your body - is placed at the forefront. we have all sorts of ways to talk about this, and most everyone i know has had a diagnosis of depression or anxiety or some kind of mental disease.
so what? what’s wrong with any of this? why did i feel compelled to think or write about it? the general thesis i’m going to try and convey here is that somewhere along the line, we have gone astray from actually helping people with how we talk about wellness, and its popularity is to blame.
between talking about mental health with teachers, advisors, classmates, other citizens of online, family, and friends, i’ve more or less internalized the entire vocabulary and theory of wellness that can be learned outside of psychological research. i’ve known how to see it when people around me are suffering from mental illnesses. i know what depression is. i know what anxiety is. i know the words to say and the habits of mind to practice to keep yourself and the people you meet from being miserable, or at least to help them shoulder the weight.
the first time i went to therapy, i was asked what symptoms brought me in, what i needed help with. i listed everything i was experiencing, and he told me that i had more or less recited the dsm entry on depression. we talked a bit more about other things, like drug use, i suspect to rule out other disorders, and then i was given my diagnosis right there. i could have diagnosed myself. frankly, the fact that i saw a professional at all indicates that i already had. there is comfort in having the authority of degrees and certifications to back up my suspicions, but the plain truth is that i billed my parents’ insurance so that i could have someone tell me what i already knew and put it on their stationery so that i could make things neat with my school administration. i already knew what was going on. the way i see it, this story is both a credit to and a condemnation of the culture of wellness. it’s incredible that, by function of being party to the social institutions that are requisite to life, i was able to learn and recognize how to know when something is wrong. that infrastructure has done a lot of good for my growth as well as for how i understand the growth of my friends.
the problem is that when it came to actually getting better, it didn’t help. as i said, i knew all the habits of mind and the things to tell yourself. how to frame your thoughts so that you can function more healthily. i feel very strongly that none of these things, therapy included, contributed much to eventually getting my shit back together. what did help was dropping out of school, getting two jobs, and spending more time around people. invariably, when i was open with my friends about what i was feeling, the conversations would follow the same lines you read online and hear from guidance counselors; you are valid, your feelings matter, don’t be so hard on yourself. while true, i already knew that.
rupi kaur and twitter invite you to practice the language and the e·mo·tion of mental unhealth because it is easy and is capable of infinite recursion. rupi kaur says so herself when she accedes that there are many people who write the exact same poetry that she does. even so, she acquires both social and fiscal capital from it, and helps open the space for corporations to do the same. the language of wellbeing has done more good for corporate social media engagement and rupi kaur’s personal brand than it has for my depression. that bothers me. it should bother you too.
gi joe tells us that knowing is half the battle. true to form, the culture that educates us is desperate to be a glass-half-full kind of culture, so i suppose we can be understanding if it forgets the other half. therein lies the rub, though, and it’s why the superficial way we discuss issues of wellbeing is at best woefully inadequate. everybody knows their trauma or their self-esteem issues or what have you aren’t their fault; they just don’t believe it isn’t their fault, not really, and that’s what we need to work on. some good can be done by reassurance, but this kind of insubstantial aphorism doesn’t do anything beyond that, and for anyone who actually needs help, reassurance just doesn’t cut it. if self care bot is an effective treatment for your ‘depression’, you aren’t really depressed. conversely, and more the point, if reading a tweet that says “just be in tune with yourself” is the only thing standing between you and the void, it’s not going to help. you need to do something.
the point of this is not to say that other people aren’t being depressed correctly. the point is that when the only language we have to talk about these things is mainstream (and profitable), it is devalued. everyone who has a bad day can say they feel depressed, and they have the vocabulary ported over from medical spaces to describe it as a condition. we need to remember that there is a difference between having depression and feeling depressed, or having anxiety and feeling anxious. if you truly do suffer from a medical condition of this nature, the bottom line is that nobody can fix it for you, and nobody can make you better. you have to be better yourself.
the appeal of this self-care approach to wellness is clear; you’re feeling shitty and hopeless, and then you read a tweet encouraging you to drink water, because it’s good for you. you get some, and you feel a little better. it helps because you haven’t eaten anything today, but it feels like it’s helping because you can tell yourself you did something. the authority of a viral account or c-list celebrity has held your hand and guided you through a process that should be clear to any toddler - drink when thirsty - and you get to feel like you’ve done something to help yourself. superficial wellness-speak can give you the sense that you’ve accomplished something without actually having to do so. you’re being patronized, and the wealthy members of the culture machine are reaping the profits.