Sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than not saying no.
By
I’m a quitter, in the right sense of the word, by present-day standards. I, like so many brave men and women with the means to do so, have gotten by for days at a time without any bread items, without any sweets, without any alcohol, without any meat.
I change when these dietary changes are afoot. I become slighter, I spend less money, I spend more time in bed, my energy drained. I become a being with less of a connection to the outside world.
Similar effects occur when I give up other types of behavior — socializing, for instance, or engagement with social media. Suddenly I turn into one of those people with a beatific air exuding from the face, someone who gets asked, “Do you meditate?” (I do.)
It’s as if, in these altered states, I have already died. I have ascended into some perceived higher plane, become the perfect version of myself I so long to manifest, floating above the meat-eating, carb-addicted, phone-holding rabble.
No wonder, perhaps, that my vows to reduce social interactions go so well at these times. Who, after all, would want to spend time with me?
The connection between insufferability and perfection has not escaped me. At those times in my life that I undergo some disciplinarian makeover, and quit some or all collectively-deemed-as-such vices, I become, in my mind, representative of both qualities. Inevitably, my world constricts.
I feel superior to the many lifestyle gurus who today attempt to achieve perfection in plain sight, because I do not benefit financially from my deprivations. No one pays me to promote any products, because I have likely eschewed all of them, dumped everything with a label into a trash bag and vowed to live off coconut oil — the all-around product of choice for the apocalyptic-minded, impressionable minimalist — alone.
I have learned, however, a surprising lesson from my various ascents into periods of insufferable perfection. They are not, I think, worth it.
I lose touch with the qualities that are enhanced by intimacy with vice, with choice, with plenitude. What sort of willpower does it take to resist a sweet when one’s house contains nothing but green powders? What is the worth of peace of mind if it necessitates a blockade against the goings-on of the world?
Moderation has become something of a lost darling these days, in the world of lifestyle trends. Gone are the days when everyone with a mic preached that eating everything in moderation, experiencing everything in moderation, is the way toward a happy and fulfilled and balanced life.
A physician whose offices I visited a year ago suggested that I cease my moratorium on alcohol. She told me that studies indicate a bell curve, in terms of mortality — no alcohol at all can hasten it, in the same way that too much can.
But there seemed to be an infinite number of reasons behind the conclusion. Perhaps people who drink a few times a week are the types who regularly meet up with friends. Perhaps they are the types who don’t take themselves or life so seriously.
The Swedish famously developed the national philosophy of “lagom,” or “just the right amount.” One may shift its slant out of a deprivational focus into an expansive one. Just the right amount of frivolity, but seriousness as well, may be a key aspect of a life well lived. Self-deprivation could, after all, be rebranded as a form of vanity, of narcissism, of immoderation — taking more than one’s due by another script.
Why should I exist on any higher, ultra-curated plane than anyone else? Thus, with the freshness of a new decade upon me, I plan to return to an original, humane, childlike and sociable state: to quit the act of quitting.
I will try everything that comes my way and, in so doing, hopefully learn how to conduct myself in a world populated with more people than just me.
I Quit!
Mallika Rao is a writer in Brooklyn.
Photo Illustration by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
