what does it mean to build a good life in an apocalypse?
Cass Elliot, influencer culture, cognitive dissonance, and hope
“Did you ever lie and listen to the rainfall
Did you ever own a homemade apple pie
Did you ever watch a child while he was prayin'
Just don't let the good life pass you by”
-Cass Elliot, 1970
Anyone who spends time on the internet is surrounded by, soaked in, the cultural touchstone known as “aspirational content”. Content meant to appeal to our deepest wishes and entertain us by letting us live vicariously through those that have attained them.
Tarte packing influencers into private planes and flying them to Bora Bora. Girls showing off their makeup wardrobes stocked with 50 different shades of liquid blush, not a single bottle of which will ever be more than halfway used. The way everyone seems to go to Europe in the summer and everyone seems to sit on the same yacht off the coast of Santorini. A million identical pristine beige houses, ALWAYS with a Samsung frame TV on the wall.
We’re told over and over again what “the good life” is. We’re led to believe that these are the people living it.
Of course, with each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So there’s also a world of content eschewing glitz and materialism, functioning off of people’s desire to differentiate themselves from mainstream, trendy consumerism.
But here too, there is a set aesthetic…a starter kit of essentials and expected experiences.
The cottage core girl’s crumbling house in the forest, maxi skirts, and Hozier records. The outdoorsy influencer’s REI co-op membership, Girlfriend Collective Leggings, and Subaru Forester. The crunchy homesteader’s SMEG refrigerator, sourdough starter, and wooden countertops.
Just because your aspirational content isn’t doing trendy consumerism, it doesn’t mean there’s no consumerism happening. Whatever your definition of “the good life” is, it probably involves buying something. Probably has a Pinterest board and an Instagram account you hope to get your world to look like.
This isn’t to stand in judgment over anyone who finds delight in decorating their life in a way they enjoy. It’s just that whenever I talk about my love of birdwatching online, I invariably get dozens of comments from people asking what they need to get into birding. When I reply that they need a working pair of eyes or ears (not even both!1), those people seem simultaneously amazed and somewhat disappointed. We want to dream a new idea of ourselves into existence by filling up a cart and hitting “order”. The thought that there might be a hobby - might even be a world out there - that doesn’t want a dime of our money but does desire our devoted attention feels like both a relief and a much higher bar.
We want to dream a new idea of ourselves into existence by filling up a cart and hitting “order”. The thought that there might be a hobby - might even be a world out there - that doesn’t want a dime of our money but does desire our devoted attention feels like both a relief and a much higher bar.
(Yes, I now go out birding carrying a small collection of gear. But I genuinely did get started years ago by just walking around outside with my eyes open, and have made a total of 3 very thoughtful, well-researched purchases to support this passion since that time. I’ve found so much fulfillment in allowing my birdwatching hobby to progress through natural stages and find my way to the things I need for it authentically and slowly! But that’s a whole different essay.)
We’ve been conditioned to equate consumerism with growth, and the things we have with our sense of self. To assume we will find community and belonging through the look we have in common rather than the ideas that might connect us.
But I feel this definition of success starting to tear at the seams. The further we get into these “unprecedented times”, the less shine aspirational content - of any kind - seems to hold. There’s something hollow about watching a jet-setting influencer’s recap of how much they flew in 2023 right after reading a climate scientist’s recap of how many bird species went extinct in that same time period. There’s a subtle aura of dread shimmering over the scroll through a perfectly curated Instagram page of fashion haul after fashion haul after rooftop bar, while multiple genocides rage across the world. Even the cottagecore babes and van lifers, with their idyllic air of isolation, their presentation signaling that they’ve figured out how to be above and away from and unaffected by it all, start to smell of cognitive dissonance and thinly veiled panic. None of these dreams feel deeply rooted enough to withstand the storms beating down our door.
At the same time, people need a dream. We urgently need a vision to reach for, we need desires that inspire us and lead us back to hope, reminding us that there is a version of life that is worth living and a world that is deeply good even within all the chaos and injustice. Without that, the chaos and injustice feel like all there is. Which is how chaos and injustice win.
The aspirational content might not be hitting anymore, but that doesn’t mean we should stop aspiring. We simply need a new (or maybe an ancient) vision to yearn after. An image of what is aspirational that doesn’t involve plugging our ears to the noise outside, or building up walls within and around ourselves so we can continue to insist everything is fine and have our pretty little afternoons.
Which leads me back to Cass Elliot.
In her song “Don’t Let the Good Life Pass You By”, the “good life” we are implored to attend to consists of helping neighbors, holding loved ones, losing, crying, and watching sunsets.
“Man was made for loving not for buying”, it insists. “Gold can’t get the things we really need.”
And yet “look my friend, there’s happiness in living.”
Cass Elliot’s vision of The Good Life™️ is not something to strive after or create. It already exists, all around us, and instead is something to be attuned to, redirected towards, acknowledged, believed in.
I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately, finding in it the feeling that I used to go on Instagram to source. A desire to stick around, an excitement to exist, a hope for what might happen if I do.
This Good Life doesn’t need us to pretend that what is happening isn’t happening to continue being good. It doesn’t need us to never fail, doubt, or fear to retain its beauty. In that way, it is a deep relaxation from the pristine highlight reel we’ve been told to base our dreams on.
While building your life around the reality of the times we exist in - not in spite of it - has a reputation for making you disenchanted, anxious, and perpetually angry, I also experience it as an exhale. Don’t get me wrong, I AM disenchanted. And anxious. And perpetually enraged, actually. There is no way to be honest and present and also fully comfy and functioning as you watch children starve on your phone. But I find the coherence of living alongside those feelings to be a felt relief when compared to the continuous, subconscious effort I know it would require to swallow and numb them so I could go back to believing in the American Dream.
So for anyone else feeling whiplash as they swing daily between desperate grief and dissociation, from witnessing atrocities back to working towards the tarnished gleam of the goals we were told we wanted: might I (and Cass Elliot) present another option?
A common refrain on social media these days is just how asinine it feels to be typing out emails and going to the dentist while the world burns. I deeply relate to and cosign each of those posts. And I also hope that we feel that tension and ask “what if it didn’t have to be that way?” What if the daily tasks of my life felt wrapped up in, aligned with, part of, the humanity I feel roiling in my belly? What if my goals and view of my life started to fall in line with what I am watching the collective crave and need?
We don’t ask those questions because it will be perfect. Most of us will still report to jobs that feel trivial. We might need to get our car serviced or our closet cleaned out. We ask those questions to see whether there is space within our goals and habits to find more coherence. Whether even those menial daily tasks can take on new beauty and resonance if we see them, see ourselves, as part of the cohort of humans striving to be free. Maybe going to the dentist and caring for our health is a part of defending human life, because we are human, and our health is life worth defending, too. Maybe every meal we make for a loved one can be infused with the passion for each other that we unearthed at the last protest. Maybe our big ambitious dreams for our life start to shift, maybe our career choices start to respond in kind, maybe over time we find ourselves living an existence that makes more sense to us, with fewer moments feeling asinine and dissociated.
Maybe, step by step, we cultivate a good life that doesn’t require us to envy (or strive to be) anyone else. Maybe our good life entails engaging deeply with the people and places around us, finding ways to help and be helped by what already exists nearby. Maybe that purpose and small daily defiance is what we truly have been aspiring to, all along.
Things I’m currently leaning into:
This iPhone shortcut by Gen Z For Change that auto-emails your reps to demand a ceasefire every day (I set mine up to send emails every time I open TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter, so they’re hearing from me OFTEN.)
Listening to the radio!! My local NPR affiliate radio station (shout out to KXT-91.7) has been the soundtrack of my week, and I’m discovering so much great new music as a result. Superior to those AI-generated Spotify playlists in every way.
I read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin this week and I can’t stop thinking about it. It was gorgeous and heart-wrenching and I have many thoughts but for now, I’ll just say that this was my first time reading classic lit in a reallllllly long time and I was slightly worried I’d have a hard time with it. But James Baldwin’s writing manages to be both profoundly beautiful and incredibly readable, and if you’re a similar book babe who’s gotten away from the classics and now feels intimidated by them, I think this would be a great book to return with.
Native American Seed’s quarterly catalog recently arrived at our house and I read it front to back multiple times. Really into seeds lately.
Related to that last point, we’re all being way too casual about plants growing. A teeny brown speck I threw out into my yard 5 months ago is currently a little leaf, and at a certain point it will know to stop making that leaf bigger and will start pushing out a flower bud, and then a whole different set of colors will somehow emerge from that bud...as a reminder all this information is coming out of a SMALL DOT…how are we all not freaking out all the time??????
I celebrated my 29th birthday on Monday, and in honor of the occasion I made a playlist full of songs that will always sound like being 28 to me. Songs that were played at my wedding and during my sunset drives and accompanied my cries and ached alongside me. It’s my new favorite playlist.
Thank you so much for reading! Having you here means the world to me. If you appreciate my work in the world and would like to see more of it, you’re invited to sign up for a paid subscription! Paid subscribers get full podcast episodes every week, are invited to join my monthly book club, and can access my close friends list on Instagram where I drop daily mindfulness reminders and card pulls.
Bonus reading, for the curious:
thanks for being here. this came at such a resonant time for me. i’m about to turn down a glitz and glam job, with people i love but don’t like to be around. i don’t want their life, and i don’t hold their values. i’m tired of goals i don’t want that make me feel hollow and bitter. i can’t pretend that i want them anymore, or that they’re good for me. it seems like a ridiculous choice to turn down, but i feel like me when i say no. i feel a certain warmth and opening, and i hope it goes further & further
happy belated birthday :)
This was exactly what I needed to hear as I fret over how much time I "waste" maintaining life that feels so trivial in the face of all the madness...a massive comfort.