The Forty-Third Question: Coming to Terms with You

Kicking off the New Year by embracing the same you. Plus our new music feature debuts.

Welcome to the first question of 2024 (and our forty-third overall)!

You might have caught me sending The Monthly Mental Note for January last Sunday, our first-ever subscriber exclusive. It’s a task/project that paid subscribers receive to help ground their journaling practice each month, and it links back to the greater theme I’ll be covering in each prompt sent that month.

As a reminder, joining Asking the Question as a paid subscriber is by no means necessary, but its a great way to further invest yourself in your commitment to journaling. I’m offering 24% off the cost of subscriptions throughout the month of January 2024.

No obligation though. You’ll still get your weekly prompt delivered to your inbox even without a paid subscription. Just like you are today!

January 2024: New Year, New You Same You

As I told my paid subscribers last week, I’ve always been uncomfortable with the marketing campaigns that ground themselves in the “New Year, New You” hook every January. It just never sat well with me:

Why should we have to become some new kind of person each year? The pressure to do so has the implicit assumption that who we are today is not enough, is not good enough. We aren’t in the right shape, we aren’t holding the right priorities, we aren’t up to “the standard.”

But I think this also comes from the way I perceive growth.

The conventional dialogue around growth, from my observations, is that most people think of growth as an upward, linear journey. You’re getting better, becoming more actualized, moving towards an apex. Points along that line which are higher, or further along, are better than the points that came before it. In this view, growth is something to be won or achieved. You can strive to reach the top. You can do better than someone else. You can win at growth.

Does growth really have winners and losers? And how can we compare growth journeys for any two people when we are all on different paths? I recall a conversation with someone who told me that I could never understand what a mutual friend was working on because they had “grown beyond what I could understand.” My inability to see the value/meaning/purpose in what someone else was doing (at least as it relates to me) is not a reflection of my growth. My growth is a reflection of my development and mine alone.

That’s why I choose to see growth as a bubble. It expands and contracts, it floats up and down, drifts left and right…moves in all kinds of directions. Nothing about growth makes sense, it moves in fits and spurts, takes two steps forward and five steps back and three to the side…and somehow, at the end of it, we’re where we wanted to be all along. Further, it means that we can remember that while we’re also all our own bubbles, we all exist in the same space. We’ll bump into each other, we’ll latch on, we’ll overlap…and then we might pull back. Our relationship to and with someone else’s growth will come and go (see: breakups, friendship or relationship). None of that means someone is further along or more “grown” than someone else. It simply means we’re occupying different spaces.

With the bubble concept we can hold space for something that is also an important part of growth: we never leave our old selves behind. Think about it as a slight variation on Tonkin’s Model of Grief, pictured below:

Somewhat similarly to how we grow with our grief, I believe we growth with both our old and new selves intact. We aren’t shedding that person and leaving them behind, we’re bringing them along for the journey. In fact, that person is a part of the reason we are on this journey in the first place. It’s important we not forget who we were because that person has made us who we are. My belief is that our goal is not to let that person go, but to simply keep them as one of many nested Matryoshka dolls our identity contains. Pretending we don’t have these parts, or that they’re entirely in the past, is dishonest and fails to properly honor the person we are, and the person we were.

So, yea, fuck New Year, New You. New Year, Same You. The same you that you’re always working on, changing, and evolving.

The Forty-Third Question: Giving Yourself a Hug

I want you to start this year by looking not at something you want to push away from, but something you are trying to pull closer.

What part of you are you trying to better embrace?

Instead of thinking about what about you needs to change, consider how something about you could be the superpower you never knew you could call upon. Maybe your anxiety isn’t just a curse, but a blessing also. Maybe your aversion to dairy is an invitation to kitchen creativity and not a punishment.

Note that this isn’t me trying to push toxic positivity upon you. Anxiety is a real disease. Lactose intolerance sucks because ice cream and cheese are amazing. But also, almost everything can have a silver lining.

Consider probing this topic by asking yourself:

• What are my New Year’s resolutions (if you made them) trying to change about the person I am?

• What is a part of me I am always complaining about? Why hasn’t it changed?

• Is this part of you static or dynamic? What impacts its development?

• What would it look like to reframe this negative as a positive, or at least a coin with two sides?

Can’t wait to hear about what this prompt unlocks for you.

Community Notes

Haven’t put this here in a while, but as a reminder if you ever want to share something, reflect, or submit a prompt idea, just drop me an email or a DM. As this community has grown, my hope is that we’ll hear from even more of you in the weeks and months ahead!

This Week’s Jam: “Controversy”

Part of the struggle I had with Asking the Question last year was figuring out a way to provide a bit of value, or at least fun, in these emails besides just our prompt. Fixing that this January.

If you subscribe to this community, chances are you know a bit about me, and that means you know I love Prince. As I share my heart with you each and every week, I’m also going to start sharing the music that moves me from The Purple One.

Kicking that feature off with the song that made me fall in love with him, “Controversy”.

If you’ve been here for a while, you might remember I wrote about “Controversy” in a previous newsletter, but it’s such a good song that I’m sure you don’t mind. I’ve already explained why this song means so much to me, so I’ll just let my past self do my today self a favor and put that explanation forth again here:

Mike Joseph, writing on Diffuser.FM, captures what this song represents perfectly:

Following Prince’s passing, there was much internet chatter from fans claiming that Prince was responsible for allowing them to be upfront about their sexuality, their ethnic backgrounds, their spirituality. We toss the word around pretty liberally these days, but “Controversy” -- all joyful, liberating, cathartic seven minutes and 16 seconds of it -- is the pure definition of an anthem.

While much of the dialogue around “Controversy” tends to be focused on the opening few lines (“Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?”), the song resonates with me because of what comes shortly after:

I can't understand human curiosity…
Controversy!
Was it good for you? Was I what you wanted me to be?

Prince is the musical artist whose refusal to be pigeonholed launched a thousand think-pieces and several hundred late night monologues. This song, truly an anthem, is his expression of disdain for such an effort. “Why does it matter? Are you happier because I fit into your box?” Prince asks. And at his refusal to do so he is branded with CONTROVERSY! Once labeled, he can be dismissed.

This song is my reminder that the only labels I need to wear, the only identities I have to don, are those which serve me, not others. This is, truly, the empowering anthem I need to remind me to live life only on the terms I define for myself. While I may not always live up to that ideal, I am always in search of living my controversial life.

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I hope you enjoyed this new format for Asking the Question! Be sure to drop a comment and let me know what you think. And if you really liked it, be sure to share it with a friend or on social (and tag me, @JonathanJacobs89).