Sh*t To Help You Show Up December 2, 2022
Not your average gift guide
I used to run an independent bookstore. In many respects, the job was a good fit for me. I love books and writers. I’m pretty good at managing people. That particular bookstore was a community-owned, cooperative business and I’d been a manager of another co-op for years, so I was intimately familiar with the unusual gifts and burdens of that sort of enterprise.
The job, sadly, also didn’t suit me because I’m an ambivalent capitalist at best who has never made much money. Though for me buying books ranks right behind food as an essential expense and I would happily eschew any number of other purchases to free up the money to do so, I understand that for reasons of survival in late-stage capitalism that’s not necessarily true for everyone. It’s also the nature of the book business that you can get the same book cheaper from Amazon, possibly from Barnes & Noble, there are used bookstores, and there’s also the social miracle that is the public library. So, persuading people to buy books at my small, local, independent bookstore wasn’t just about convincing them to buy books. It was also about convincing them to pay more for them because it was the right thing to do— for the local economy and the vibrancy of our downtown— and (possibly) more in line with their values.
I believed in the bookstore completely, but it turns out that persuasion is not my strong suit. I struggle with drawing people into what I believe, especially when following my belief involves spending money that I am well aware many of us do not have. I wanted to present my case for why I thought customers’ financial priorities should align with mine and have them agree with me, but I couldn’t stop feeling guilty about how their (potentially small) income would be affected.
Surprise! This is not a good way to persuade people to buy a lot of books.
So, how do you become a persuader? Y’know, without being manipulative or judgmental or passive-aggressively divisive? And why might the skills of persuasion be important to cultivate, even if you aren’t, say, trying to get people to buy things?
According to Anand Giridharadas, it’s because persuasion, the ability to bring people around to your way of thinking through conversation, is at the heart of democracy. His book, The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight For Hearts, Minds, and Democracy is the first book I’m going to recommend to you in this unusual gift guide. Read it, ask for it, or gift it if you care about the state of our democracy, and particularly how the Left has often failed when it comes to persuasion. He offers multiple concrete examples of folks who are trying to do things differently. Each is thinking critically about how to hold their ground in regards to their beliefs while at the same time providing multiple on-ramps for people who don’t yet share all of their beliefs or perspective to get on the road with them to where they’re trying to go.
Critical to this enterprise is meeting people where they are, forging real, human connections, and then framing the issue at hand in terms of shared values. Implicit is the assumption that there are some shared values between most of us, even if we also carry other values that contradict the ones we share. The persuader’s task is not to get people to replace their contradictory values with the persuader’s own but simply to point out the contradictory values they already carry with kindness and curiosity. Then the persuader walks with them as they wrestle with those contradictions, putting a human face on the shared value in order to entice them to join the persuader in the work they’re doing.
Not everyone is meant to do this persuasion work, nor should they be asked to. Especially when it comes to confronting issues of racism or other oppressions. Those who have been wounded and are actively managing that wound simply to survive aren’t obligated to find the depth of patience that this essential work of democracy requires. But there are many of us who aren’t actively managing the same wound who absolutely can. In order to non-violently bring people towards a more equitable future and counter the divisions being sown constantly in our culture today, we must.
But, hey! Even if you aren’t a politics geek like me, this book is instructive and thought-provoking. As a parent who doesn’t believe in corporal punishment or “because I said so” I have to persuade my kids to do all kinds of things that they don’t necessarily want to do. Over time, I also have to persuade them to have beliefs that support them in making good choices without any intervention from me. This book caused me to think deeply about how to do that in a way that respects who they are, which is distinctly different from who I am and always will be.
Finally, I’m a pacifist, but one who doesn’t have much occasion to place my body in harm’s way in order to disrupt cycles of violence. But the reality is that communication alone can be implicitly violent. Dehumanization is violence. Demonization is violence. Divisiveness is violence. This book challenged me to think about all the ways that I participate in perpetuating divisions between myself and people who aren’t exactly like me by labeling them irredeemable or unchangeable. It forced me to think about how to live into my pacifism more fully, holding myself accountable and practicing my integrity in ways I hadn’t considered before.
The second book I’d recommend to you, either to ask for or to gift to someone else, is How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question. I wrote at length about moral philosophy and this wonderful book back in February, and now it’s in paperback! You can read that edition of the newsletter here (It’s pretty great, if I do say so myself.) but I’ll tell you some of what I learned from Schur’s book here and now…
Moral philosophy isn’t about our beliefs. Instead, moral philosophy tells us how we apply our beliefs in real-time. How we make the decisions that, hopefully, keep us (mostly) in our integrity.
There are many schools of thought on how to approach applying our beliefs, all of which involve asking the following questions:
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
Is there something I could do that’s better?
Why is it better?
Where the various schools differ most is in the answers to questions three and four. The what and why of the “better” in a given situation varies based on the time we have to make a decision, the complexity of the circumstance, and our own energy to grapple with the ethical considerations of the moment, so we might follow different schools depending. That’s okay! But understanding the different ways you might answer those questions and live into your beliefs is good information to have if integrity matters to you.
Also, Michael Schur is hilarious and very, very human. He doesn’t believe in perfection and argues that even if it was possible it would make us horribly boring people. None of us wants to be boring! But we do want to live with integrity the best we can. This book helps us figure out how to do that.
Another book I read this last year and wrote at length about for the newsletter is Daniel H. Pink’s The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. Before reading it I thought of myself as someone without regrets. If everything I’ve done, even the things that went badly, led me to the person I am today (who I really like) then what is the point of regret?
Pink, however, taught me that the absence of regret actually signals a lack of neurological development, mental illness, neurological illness, or psychopathy. In other words, small children and sick people don’t feel regret. The rest of us are kind of stuck with it, so we might as well learn to use it for good.
How to use it for good is much of what Pink writes about. He works his way methodically through what he calls the four “core regrets”—foundational regrets (“If only I’d done the work”), boldness regrets (“If only I’d taken the chance”), moral regrets (“If only I’d done the right thing”), and connection regrets (“If only I’d reached out”). He argues that engaging in discernment when processing these sorts of regrets gets us to the essence of being human.
He also argues that all other regrets, as well as the shame and guilt that often accompany them, are best left by the wayside. Chalk it up to being human and keep moving.
Both these arguments resonate deeply with my belief that integrity is a practice. We often discern how to live out our beliefs by reflecting on when we didn’t live up to them well. As much as possible, we resist shame and self-flagellation because perfection is impossible. And then we try again.
Fourth recommendation! This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley. This slim book (also now out in paperback) is a revelation. Riley is wresting the position of contemplative out of the hands of old white men and those who’ve chosen to step outside of normal, daily life to live in religious seclusion to show us how to live in the regular world as a deeply thoughtful person. She is asking big questions about life, faith, and grief, about belonging, dignity, and liberation. Weaving the stories of three generations of her family together, she walks us through her search for answers.
I am interested in reclaiming a contemplation that is not exclusive to whiteness, intellectualism, ableism, or mere hobby. And as a Black woman, I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that divorces my mind from my body, voice, or people. To suggest a form of faith that tells me to sit down alone and be quiet? It does not rest easy on the bones. It is a shadow of true contemplative life, and it would do violence to my Black-woman soul.
This book is lyrical and heartbreaking, deeply embodied, unflinching, and compassionate. It is so short you might be tempted to fly through it quickly, but I think it does its best work on the reader who’s willing to slow down and contemplate along with Riley. How would you answer the questions she is posing? What are the stories that lead you to those answers?
Finally, if you haven’t read it yet, or even if you have, I encourage you to ask for or gift Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny, Beautiful Things. The recently released, 10th-anniversary edition containing six new letters can be found at the link.
This book, y’all. Like many, I would say this book changed my life. When I first read it a decade ago in the wake of my divorce I remember feeling that it was simultaneously blowing my mind and breaking my heart in the best possible way. Cheryl has been through the wringer in many respects, but in her work writing the advice column Dear Sugar she doesn’t use that wealth of experience as justification to simply tell people what to do, the advice column equivalent of “because I said so.” Instead, she digs deep inside her experiences, mining from them a stunning level of compassion. Hurting, confused, and angry people are seen, held, and comforted in the hands of Sugar.
As a reader, we are held by extension and invited to find some mercy for our imperfect, human selves. We are also called back to the best in us, to standing up on our own behalf, and to doing what we know is right even when we quail in the face of the challenge. As hard as such work is, we know Sugar will be working right alongside us.
This book is a master class in deep listening and public love. I don’t think any library is complete without it.
That’s enough for now, my friends. How did I do? Did I meet you where you are and persuade you to join me in the land of these wonderful books? I hope so, regardless of how you acquire them.
Though acquiring them from Bookshop.org, which contributes a portion of every sale to independent bookstores, or your local independent bookstore would be much appreciated. Thanks for considering.
XO, Asha
P.S. You can also gift someone a subscription to this newsletter! Then they can benefit from links to all of these wonderful resources and the conversation we’re all having together. Bonus!
Asha!!! I was reading your letter and writing down all of these wonderful book recommendations and was planning to comment here and say thank you and then I came upon my own book!! You made my day, dear sister. THANK YOU! In all caps. Forever.
Thisb was helpful thank you.