Letting ourselves change

And why we're reluctant to do it.

Photo: Alexandra Folster via Pexels

I look forward to Saturday, when The New York Times’ The Morning newsletter lands in my inbox and it’s lead article, written by Melissa Kirsch, takes on a more cultural and philosophical bent.

Last week, she wrote about, “Plot Twists: The best art makes us question the received ideas we’ve internalized and, just maybe, offers us ideas for living differently.” (gift link)

Her way into the topic was via Miranda July’s 2024 novel “All Fours.”

“‘All Fours’ is about a woman in her 40s who sets off on a road trip from California to New York but gets waylaid a few miles from home, rents a motel room and stays there for three weeks, during which time she reconsiders all the received ideas she’s internalized about being a wife, mother, woman, artist.”

I read it last summer and… mind blown. If you’re over 40 and you’ve yet picked it up, put it on your list. Heck, you may like it if you’re under 40 but you still have lots of living to do before you arrive in the place of the protagonist and why ruin it. But I digress.

The book took off and was named by the NY times as one of “The 10 Best Books of 2024.” (gift link). And Miranda July has continued the conversation. She has a Substack where posts regularly and hosts an “All Fours” group chat. And she was recently a guest on the Modern Love Podcast. This is where Melissa Kirsch picked up the thread.

In her article, Kirsch shared:

“I was struck by one portion of the interview in which she mentions that, when she was working on ‘All Fours,’ she and her friend Isabel would ‘meet once a week and eat and talk about the idea that we were always changing.’ This set my mind racing: I meet up regularly with friends, but we seldom have an agenda beyond catching up. How exciting and productive to have a regular meetup with a theme!

July and Isabel specifically focused their get-togethers on the biological changes they were experiencing during perimenopause — ‘that we were actually pretty different at different times of the month and that we were kind of putting on an act of sameness’ — but if that isn’t applicable to your own circumstances, you could just talk about how you’ve changed generally, your outlook or your routines or your tastes.”

That was the bit that jumped out at me, “and that we were kind of putting on an act of sameness.” It rang true to me.