Mining The Ruins
Your lowest moments, filled with sadness, alienation, disappointment, and longing, are precious resources in the wider story of your life.
In the Wilderness (1952) by Helen Lundeberg
This perfect profile of SZA by Danyel Smith made me cry three times on Saturday morning before I was even out of bed. But at first I’ll admit that I was unsettled by all of the active verbs:
The world’s deepest ocean appears on your left, a vast and breathing GIF. Moons charm bloodstreams, and dolphins model fortitude. Hawks plunge for fat mackerel, and riptides drag fools far out and forever under waves that from the shore look like peace and possibility.
That’s very good prose but it can also be a red flag in a celebrity profile, a signal that you’re about to hear a parade of producers and agents and famous ‘friends’ unpack their adjectives about a very young person like she’s a cross between Mozart, the Dalai Lama, and a dozen still-piping-hot Krispy Kreme donuts made just for you.
But that’s not how Smith does things. Instead, she shows us how it felt to grow up the way SZA did, spilling over with energy and wonder and frustration and not knowing where to put it. There’s a story in the piece that I don’t want to spoil here, but we see SZA at a moment when she’s feeling vulnerable, and instead of accepting defeat, she twists it into an opportunity to deliver a giant noogie to thousands of human beings, all at once.
It’s a triumphant story, one that a less nuanced writer would treat with a big high five and leave it at that. Here is SZA #winning, her new album has been number one on the charts for eight weeks now! Champagne corks pop, and we’re out! But SZA and Smith are both more interested in what happens after the confetti is swept away.
That’s when she realized: “Oh, babe, I can transform haters. That ruined me.”
Why ruined, and not built?
“Because it was like, you don’t have to like me, but you’re going to respect me. ’Cause I’m going to be better than you, I’m going to execute this better than you, and I’m not going to fail. That’s where this” — she made a small gesture toward herself — “really came from.” How can a formative triumph be a source of ruin? If you consider her musical tradition, the logic becomes clear. It’s Black and blue. It’s Bessie and Billie. Nancy Wilson and Natalie Cole. It’s the cold belly of even the joyous vocals of Gladys and Dionne. It’s Beyoncé’s “Lemonade.” It’s Badu. It’s Jazmine Sullivan and Jhené Aiko. It’s nearly every song Sade’s ever made. Be it getting booed or being ghosted, the ruination will be utilized.
But the realization that you can mine your disappointments for strength and inspiration is a bittersweet one. Because committing to excellence and supernatural feats and simply refusing to fail is hard on you, as Smith illustrates in her profile. It’s also very hard to achieve all of your dreams at a young age, before you’ve really figured out how to live without constantly striving to be special.
These might not seem like problems that most of us share, but they lead down the same path, towards the realization that we can aim at big targets — VICTORY, success, creative achievement, love that lasts, a feeling that we matter — but these aren’t always the things that make life satisfying and joyful from day to day. If you want to feel good, you can’t live in that giant-noogie space where you need to be the best. You can take pride in what you’ve done, but then you’ve got to figure out how to grapple with the disappointments and losses of your ordinary life.
That profile reminded me that the important part isn’t where your dreams lead you, it’s learning how to relish your dreams, today and tomorrow and the next day. The key move isn’t learning how to win, it’s cultivating the conviction that you deserve to dream, period, and you’re not going to let anyone else block your unique view of those dreams. SZA’s mom, Audrey Rowe, who didn’t initially want her daughter to pursue a creative path, echoes this sentiment:
“It’s so hard to follow your own dreams,” Rowe said. “So many of us abandon it very young, especially if the people that we respect and love and trust think we could or should be doing something different. I’m so glad that she didn’t listen to me.”
Sometimes you have to block out other people’s discouraging input. And other times, you have to block out your own defensive impulse to be right about everything, all the time.
Last night, I was talking to two friends whose marriages failed in the most spectacular and dismaying manners imaginable. They both said that if they hadn’t had to grapple with those worst case scenarios, which forced them to question themselves and their reality at a deep level, they wouldn’t have figured out how they wanted to live moving forward. The extreme circumstances made it impossible tell the same old easy, self-protective stories about what was happening to them. They had to face reality head-on, and reinvent their ideas of themselves and what shape their lives should take from the ground up. That process made them more open and vulnerable and also made their lives more adventurous, fun, and unexpectedly ambitious in ways that feed them.
Devastation and ruination are gifts in the big picture of a life. Loneliness and longing and rage are a kind of a dare to your core self: Will you build higher walls, or will you let down your defenses at this tender time, to let the world into your heart without reservation? Will you retreat to easy stories about who’s always been wrong about you and who deserves to be taught a lesson, or will you tell new stories about the things you’ve been wrong about and the lessons that you deserve to learn?
Through this lens, the opening images of that SZA profile reveal themselves as a foreshadowing of what’s to come:
The world’s deepest ocean appears on your left, a vast and breathing GIF. Moons charm bloodstreams, and dolphins model fortitude. Hawks plunge for fat mackerel, and riptides drag fools far out and forever under waves that from the shore look like peace and possibility.
What initially looks like your salvation might just drag you under eventually. Even when you’re strong and resilient and full of love, even when you’re graceful and daring and special, you still don’t get to win forever and ever. But the answer to inevitable losses and hurts and betrayals isn’t working harder, telling slicker stories, or thrashing to stay on top. The answer is surrendering to reality, in all of its chilling uncertainty.
It’s not easy to take a new, softer shape in a world with so many sharp edges. And it’s not morally righteous to humble yourself as a woman in particular, the way this twisted world so often insists that you do. But inside that soft, humble place, the moon charms your bloodstream, lighting a path toward unexpected new sources of connection and purpose.
The ugliest, loneliest, most disheartening moments are gifts that, if you’re soft enough, whisper possibilities in your ear: You have more to offer. Set your sights higher. Reach deeper. Give more love to yourself and the world.
This ugly moment might just be your biggest break.
Thank you for reading Ask Polly! I sometimes write dueling advice with Rusty Foster at Today in Tabs; this week we unexpectedly agreed about everything, which seems ominous somehow. On Thursday, I talked to Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie about creativity and the perils of social media, which you can listen to here. I also want to strongly recommend Hung Up by Hunter Harris, whose funny, smart newsletter on pop culture linked to that SZA profile on Friday. This is a free bonus post, but if you want to get Ask Polly twice a week, you should definitely:
Oh man. What an important lesson. And you’ll hear it virtually nowhere in our victory-fixated culture.
YES! "Devastation and ruination are gifts in the big picture of a life". At the top of my daily gratitude list is the fact that the spectacular implosion of my marriage and my entire life at 57 provided me with the opportunity to wake up and re-evaluate. Took a little time to get beyond the revenge or redemption narratives, but 8 years later I'm living my life, my way, and continuining to learn and grow.