When meaning is not as important as the way we look for it.
Often, when night comes, I am afraid. A strange, almost agreeable kind of angst. In the vast darkness of the room, right before I slide into sleep, I think about mornings and the faint possibility that I may not get to see the next one.
I am what you would call a young woman, standing at the threshold of my thirties, still pretty at exactly three angles, in good health and similarly good spirits. Or so it seems most of the time. You’d look at my life and think white privilege: bourgeois upbringings, an academic education if I had wanted…
Can making sense of who we might have been help us understand who we are?
Once, in one of my unlived lives, I was a singer. It was the late 2000s, when the indie-rock phenomenon was having its commercial breakthrough and becoming popular enough for us novices to recognize the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” in the theme song of “Charmed” and most of the band names cited in “Gilmore Girls”, which I would watch and re-watch, unendingly, daydreaming about being a girl in a rock band like Lane’s character, or Kim Gordon, for that matter.
Sometime during my sophomore year in high school, I unearthed a dusty guitar my grandfather had gifted to me…
How surprising can the recent riots at the Capitol be?
When the news of the recent violence at the Capitol reached me in London, it was late in the evening. I had just finished brushing my teeth, the taste of synthetic mint still in my mouth, when my fiancé pointed his phone at me, alarmed, and started scrolling through pictures of the rioters published on the BBC News website. I rushed to check my phone, nine notifications by the New York Times app stacked blunt against the blue, appeasing background.
“Can you believe it?” my fiancé said, his eyes still fixed on the phone.
I could.
In a country wounded…
Optimism isn’t always constructive.
On December 31st, 1998, prompted by a sudden will to turn my luck, I considered the idea of keeping a journal, as older, cooler graders did.
What made the thought of what I later called a secret diary so fascinating was the prospect of making my wishes for the new year come true, by the sheer virtue of intention. A little sister in lieu of a brother, a friend who’s not imaginary, overnight flexibility so when my gymnastics coach would force my legs into a split, it won’t hurt like hell. This kind of wishes. …
How do you make a poor man rich? You make him wonder.
I am writing this from my bunker room in the outskirts of London. Bunker room because I hardly ever have to leave it, now that we live in the aftermath of COVID-19, the era of smart remote working. An umpteenth zoom meeting is scheduled for this evening. A facetime call with a friend will happen sometime soon. A decaf oat latte is fuming by my side. I know it will grow cold before the end of this paragraph, as it usually does.
My window displays the same scene every day. Except there’s something different, something new each day. This morning…
Sometimes we don’t need every answer. Sometimes the question in itself is enough.
I apologize for the lousy, clickbait-y title. It’s hard to think clearly when the past year has laid over your head the same foggy blanket the British sky has placed over its roofs. From where I stand, the urban lights are melting behind a thick, white veil of mist, as if filtered through milk. London has never looked more vulnerable, and I have never felt more practical.
I apologize for the title because I don’t know enough to teach anything to anyone, let alone myself. But this is what twenty-twenty has taught me. A non-lesson from a non-year. I am…
What if thoughtfulness is the new mindfulness?
When I ask friends or family to repeat what they just said to me, the reply is almost always: “Did you zone out again?” I usually like to answer that being zoned out is my natural state; I just zone back in once in a while.
Although I mean it as a joke, there is some truth in my line — one that hints at the possibility that inviting diverse thoughts in our mind instead of rejecting them in the name of presence can sometimes be good for us.
The first time I caught myself spacing out, I was in…
Anticipation is a key component of joy.
One of my first childhood memories is my father making unsolicited impressions of Mr. Bean at the dinner table. He was a fan, which made me a fan. We would spend most Saturday afternoons crouched on the sofa in front of the large screen, waiting for the opening choral theme tune, which always made me a bit anxious and ecstatic. I never really enjoyed any episode as much as I enjoyed those few moments of expectation before it started.
Often, as recent studies suggest, it’s the wait for something to happen rather than the experience itself that excites us. In…
If it’s not painful, it’s not worth the effort.
According to psychological research, putting yourself in new and unfamiliar situations triggers a unique part of the brain that releases dopamine — nature’s make-you-happy chemical. This region of the brain is only activated when we see or experience completely new things. In other words: we only grow when we seek the unfamiliar, the unknown, the uncomfortable.
Few people enjoy feeling uncomfortable. It’s much easier to hide, to stay, to avoid risks, to never leap, to never begin. But the change we are looking for is often in the discomfort we are avoiding.
We tell ourselves that things will change —…
Sometimes sincerity takes a few drafts
This is not a compendium of advice on how to make your verbs active and your prose less cluttered. Not because word economy and voice aren’t important, but because syntax, punctuation, and vocabulary alone don’t make a writer worth his salt.
You can make your sentences sing. You can discern an asyndeton from a polysyndeton. You can spot a comma splice. Perhaps you know who Stanley Fish is. You can play by the rules, but ultimately they won’t matter if you don’t have a container in which to put them. …
Marianna Saver
I write to understand what I don’t know. I also send monthly love notes: bit.ly/themorningair
