Things Worth Earning
Sunset in Lisbon is earned.
I have seen it only after climbing up steps and navigating clanging yellow trolleys and slotting myself in between a pair of Spaniards preening for a photo and a Dutch couple with their faces pressed into each other’s necks.
I have stood there, catching my breath, as I watched it start: saw it throwing light towards the bridge, which turned terra-cotta in the glow, saw it dousing the tiled roofs and yellow walls and blue tiles in a gilded net.
I have worked for that view. I have earned it.
Earned things are things you usually share. You work hard for something and then see it reflected in the people around you: the coworkers that celebrate the promotion, the fellow runners who pound your back at the finish line, the friends who come over for the housewarming and ooh and aww over the appliances.
Sometimes that sharing is virtual; we put the things we earn on social media. Michaela Coel reminded us in her Emmy speech this weekend that we probably shouldn’t do that quite so much:
“In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others to help us better determine how we feel about ourselves, and to in turn feel the need to be constantly visible, for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success—do not be afraid to disappear.”
But making ourselves visible on Instagram is another way of inviting our community to see what we’ve worked for. To be there with us.
I’m reporting a story right now, and a source told me yesterday that she thinks millennials are more likely to recognize burnout and actually change the conditions that cause it—to “design their lives,” she said—because social media shows them what else is possible.
She went on to say that that works even if what’s shared is a bit of a scam. For all its ills, she argued, social media saves more than it strands.
But whether you think social media is a poison or a panacea, it’s not where I want to share my Lisbon sunsets. At least not live. Everyone around me is sharing in real time: clinking beers and gesturing out towards the view, nesting into each other.
Not having someone to do that with in Lisbon brings up a peculiar feeling—not peculiar as in unique, because I talked about it on my call with my writing group and, as it turns out, three of the four of us have had that exact same experience in this exact same city.
Peculiar as in strange, as intriguing, as in worthy of further study, then.
Feeling are meant to be felt
The feeling of earning a sunset in Lisbon and not sharing it with anyone is complicated. A mix of deep appreciation and quiet isolation. I felt it. Caitlin felt it. Anna felt it, too.
I’ve been trying to feel my feelings more lately. In writing group and other places, sure, but I’ve been especially trying to feel them alone, unaided by the calming words of an attentive friend or the audio anxiety blanket of a good playlist.
I sat on the steps of an office building last night—an hour after climbing up slick cobblestone steps to see the sunset race down the alleys of Principle Real—and wrote down all the feelings I’d had over the last five hours, and what caused them, the push-pull machinations of mood, the former of which I’ll share quickly here:
cheeky / excited / disappointed / empowered / hilarious / grateful / hurt / supported and softly held / sure / confident / offended / chastened / warmed / shut out / present
It surprised even me, seeing all of them lined up like that, the mitochondrial powerhouse of my emotional range.
Those feelings had nowhere to go. They had my Notes app, of course, and eventually here, this essay and this blog and this habit of me coming to the page (/screen) to figure myself out. But mostly they sat there, inside me, and I acknowledged them and then sat there with them until they were ready to go, like strangers at a train station, off to whatever came next.
Let’s be alone together
Let’s talk about the feeling of loneliness and all its different shapes and sizes.
There is the particular loneliness of watching the sunset by yourself, and hearing a dozen people chat in half a dozen languages. An isolated loneliness.
Of claiming a little cove at the beach, one naturally fortified by shell-studded rock, unfurling a towel like a pennant and claiming a country of one, returning to it after dipping your body in the sea to sprawl out nearly-nude, a knee tucked up towards your side, the brim of your hat shading the book you’re reading. A cautious but delicious loneliness.
The loneliness of waiting for a train, not sure you’re at the right place at the right time and not knowing how to ask anyone, and then of finding out you are indeed all set, and of climbing on, of settling into a spot, of sprawling gently into the corner like a thrown coat, episodes downloaded and book waiting. A brave and indulgent loneliness.
There is being on your own and being alone. There is being lonely, too.
I was out to drinks with a few people from my coliving space when a man we’ll call Antoine, whose combination of mussed, curly brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses and crisp, ankle-length, navy-blue chinos always made him look like he’d just come from either giving a lecture at the Sorbonne or having a post-sex cigarette with one of his students there, proposed a toast.
We had just realized that everyone present had broken up with a partner during the pandemic.
Antoine raised a glass, smiled, and said: “We are all alone here!”
He meant “single,” but he was right.
We were alone. We were together, but alone; in community, but only temporarily. A special kind of alone—and sometimes, though not that night, a special kind of loneliness, too.
And it needed to be felt.
Scientific metaphors I might not be using right >>>
I told Marta yesterday that I make a lot of mistakes but not speaking up when I feel I’ve been mistreated isn’t one of them. I’m really quite good at it.
People sometimes confuse that as me loving confrontation. That’s not it.
This is: I am unwilling to let my energy be taken without my consent. My time is the most finite resource I have, and I refuse to spend it on people who treat it like it’s infinitely renewable and entirely theirs.
That’s why the sunset feeling, peculiar as it may be, isn’t actually a type of loneliness.
It couldn’t be, not when I am so hyperaware of time and energy. in one to three minutes, the entire sun, this molten ball of gas and flame, this thing 1.3 million times bigger than our entire globe, disappears. It slips below the horizon line and the earth keeps spinning and if you blink too much you’ll miss it.
The peculiar feeling is more like anticipation.
Standing there, having worked hard for that moment, and having been reminded of how quickly time moves and how none of us will ever have enough of it, a realization settles in: I’m ready to share that moment with someone else.
Because spending time with people who don’t get us is bad. It is, in fact, the worst. Mejor estar sola que mal acompañada, and all that. But spending time with people who do get us? That’s magic. That’s exponential. That’s everything-the-light-touches-turns-to-gold, that’s a staunch refusal to accept the first law of thermodynamics, that’s alchemy.
Sunset in Lisbon makes you work for something that disappears in a matter of minutes. But just because it will end—and quickly—doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth having.
I am ready to see my sunsets. To sit here and really see them. And I’m ready, really ready, to be seen by someone else, too.