Sometimes you’re in a book store and you walk by a “Buy 2, get 1 free” table. And on that table is a collection of books you’ve very much heard of, and some of them you haven’t read. You pick one up and count to one. There is another book you haven’t heard of but are assured by the publisher is written by someone who wrote another famous thing, and it has an intriguing title, so you grab that too.
Number three, at least for me, is the crapshoot book. It’s free! Go nuts!!! Get the book with the taxidermy racoon that looks like the happiest being that has ever existed in the history of anything. In this case, that was Jenny Lawson’s “Furiously Happy.”
Personally, I’ve never been that drawn to taxidermy outside of something you might see at a natural history museum and only then because it’s something I have not and likely will not see in real life. But this racoon (and the matching one she also owns) changed my mind a bit. Imagine that thing being the first sight when you walk in the door each day. How could your every frustration not immediately melt away?
Lawson explains her book (and really life outlook) like this:
“Furiously Happy” is the name of this book. It’s also a little something that saved my life. My grandmother used to say, ‘Into everyone’s life a little rain must fall — rain, assholes, and assorted bullshit.’ I’m paraphrasing. But she was right. We all get our share of tragedy or insanity or drama, but what we do with that horror is what makes all the difference.”
She mixes funny stories with plain talk about her struggles with depression and anxiety and how embracing this particular outlook helps her move through the world. I thought one of the most poignant sections came as she talked about the difficulty in explaining anxiety to other people, since, as she says, things that scare you don’t scare other people.
She brings up flying and how everything except the part of being on a plane is hard for her, while for many others, the exact opposite is true:
“I look at them with pity and wish I could explain to them that their fear is irrational. That we’ll be fine and that even if we aren’t it’ll be over soon and there’s nothing we can do about it. I consider telling them that, but then I worry they’ll keep talking to me and I can’t have that because I need the hour before we land to be quiet so I have time to study and memorize the terminal maps of the airport we’ll be landing in, and triple-check that my notes about every step of the travel are right, and worry about the unknown place we’ll land and the myriad of spots I could become lost.”
I don’t have anxiety on her level, but this is something I 100 percent understand. Ask me to go somewhere I’ve never been before and I will study a map of how to get there multiple times, even when I’m sure I’ve got it, and in the days or hours leading up to the actual traveling I will from time to time repeat the steps in my head. If there’s a Google satellite image I want to see it. If there’s a picture of the actual door I’m going to walk up to, I want to see that too. And if I can have an idea of who will be there, that would be great. Thanks.
Throughout the book there are fantastically random, funny things, like an entire chapter of exactly that, which included this idea I need someone to follow up on:
“If you put a bunch of chameleons on top of a bunch of chameleons on top of a bowl of Skittles what would happen? Is that science? Because if so, I finally get why people want to do science.”
This is how we get kids involved in science. Don’t set them up with a dead frog that smells of chemicals and have them dissect it. Chameleons on Skittles!
Lawson writes fondly of her very patient husband who at many points shakes his head but always remains supportive of her. And he provides this story of a friend going through airport security with a giant tub of hair gel that made some people on the Metro look at me funny when I tried to stifle my laughter:
“It was like something from a barber college,” Victor told me later. “And security was like, ‘Sir, you’re seventy-two ounces over the limit.'”
She also talks about not being a fan of parsley and how nobody ever eats it. But Jenny Lawson, I have to tell you that I flagged this page in the book because I very recently witnessed the following exchange:
“Hey, do you want some parsley? I got this big bag.”
“Ooooooooo, yes please!”
That was real life. It happened right in front of me, and while I don’t understand chomping on raw parsley like it’s an Oreo, I can’t deny its existence.
Finally, she explains something I think a lot of us understand as we get older, but unfortunately not everyone does, about being feeling free to be ourselves:
“You learn to appreciate the fact that what drives you is very different from what you’re told should make you happy. You learn that it’s okay to prefer your personal idea of heaven (live-tweeting zombie movies from under a blanket of kittens) rather than someone else’s idea that fame/fortune/parties are the pinnacle of what we should all reach for. And there’s something surprisingly freeing about that.”
After feeling like I was slogging through a couple of books at the end of last year, this was a fun start to 2018. I’m halfway through my next read and I am furiously happy to report that trend continues. Stay tuned.