But what will my haters say?
If I even have haters
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I have a fear of looking foolish and being hated on. At times, even just a social media post can make me cringe imagining what my haters will say.
It’s occurred to me that I’m flattering myself to think I have haters, lol. I’m pretty milquetoast, too afraid of putting myself out there enough to be hated.
In praise of light hating
In fact, if anything, I am the hater. From time to time, I indulge in some light hating. To a close friend about a coworker’s penchant for going barefoot. To a coworker about a family member’s scheme to domesticate voles and sell them as exotic pets. (These stories are completely fabricated. If you’re reading this, they are not about you.)
If the hating is truly light—just a bit of ragging—it’s a victimless crime. Maybe even therapeutic. More often than not, I direct envy (and every other negative feeling) inward and go around feeling bad about things that aren’t even my business. I hate on myself.
On the other hand, there’s fargin
I recently learned this Yiddish word fargin. It means happiness for another person’s success. It’s basically the opposite of schadenfreude.
If you’ve experienced it, you know how GREAT it feels to be genuinely joyous for another person’s triumph.
Hearing a coworker was scouted as a foot model, or that a family member now makes seven figures off an Instagram account called Pocket Full of Voles can be uplifting.
Maybe you recognize that this person had to put themselves out there to find success. Maybe this helps inspire you to do the same.
Maybe you could start with a silly risk
Last week I mentioned that this Substack is a way for me to put myself out there, take a silly risk.
What is a silly risk? I guess it’s an anti-perfectionistic exercise in exposing myself, despite my fear of being misunderstood or disliked.
Calling it silly helps me feel a bit better when deep down I fear it is stupid or cringe.
I was trying to think of a good example of me taking a silly risk and realized maybe I haven’t? Or maybe just not the kind that lends itself to a pithy story suitable for publishing in a supposedly inspiring newsletter. Because I’ve signed up for random library writing classes, done yoga teacher training, and gone paragliding in India. But my more story-worthy risks have fallen into two other categories: Stupid, like all the times I blacked out and made it home via mysterious circumstances or not at all, and Significant, like when I quit drinking a dozen years ago.
This brings me to the best example of a silly risk that I could think of in time to publish this newsletter, though it’s not mine.
Throughout my sobriety I’ve attended an annual women’s AA retreat, which is usually a combination of helpful, uncomfortable, moving, and cringe. Particularly the obligatory talent show. A fair amount of recovery rhetoric concerns ego-puncturing; I guess this is the point of the talent show that you get peer-pressured into participating in, the same way you did with your first beer at 13. Also maybe the point is fun? Idk.
I have performed in the talent show. I recall doing a headstand for some reason. (This was around the time of my yoga teacher training.) That is not the story I want to share, though.
The Sober Ladies Fashion Show
The story I want to share is about a woman I’ll call Beatrice, a woman with a raspy voice and decades of sobriety who every retreat organized a sober ladies fashion show. Except it wasn’t a fashion show at all because there were no outfit changes. It was just a group of women—some with years of recovery and steady jobs, some with two days clean and no home—sashaying up and down the aisle of whatever community/church retreat center had been booked for the weekend. Beatrice announced them one by one from a podium up front, and they each took a turn for the audience in their sweatpants and slippers.
Why? To proclaim themselves, I suppose. In a silly, low stakes way.
I’ll admit that the first time I saw this performance, I looked a bit askance at the “models.” But by the second time, a year later, it struck me as profound. My work in recovery had helped me to feel more secure in myself, opening me up to fargin.
I guess that’s the thing about risking looking foolish. With time, your perspective can change and what seemed so embarrassing either doesn’t matter as much, or matters even more—in a good way.