Joshua Fraser explores why we ignore warnings about chasing money, fame, and toxic relationships, then learn these lessons painfully on our own. We convince ourselves we're exceptions to rules everyone else breaks. Even when public figures repeat these obvious truths, we attack them for it.
Chapters
I want to just read you a two minute essay that I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It's called Unteachable Lessons. I've been thinking about a special category of lesson one which you cannot discover without experiencing it firsthand. There is a certain subset of advice that for some reason we all refuse to learn through instruction. These are unteachable lessons, no matter how arduous or costly or effortful it is going to be for us to find out ourselves. We prefer to disregard the mountains of warnings from our elders, songs, literature, historical catastrophes, public scandals, and instead thinks some version of yeah, that might be true for them, but not for me. We decide to learn the hard lessons the hard way, over and over again. Unfortunately, they all seem to be the big things too. It's never new insights about how to put up level shelves or charmingly introduce yourself at a cocktail party. Instead, we spend most of our lives learning firsthand the most important lessons that the previous generations already warned us about Things Money won't make you happy. Fame won't fix your self worth. You don't love that pretty girl, she's just hot and difficult to get. Nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. You will regret working too much worrying is not improving your performance. All your fears are a waste of time. You should see your parents more. You'll be fine after the breakup and will be grateful that you did it. It's perfectly okay to cut toxic people out of your life. And even reading this list back, I'm rolling my eyes at how fucking trite it is. These are all basic bitch obvious insights that everybody has heard before. But if they're so basic, why does everyone so reliably fall prey to them throughout our lives? And if they're so obvious, why do people who have recently become famous or wealthy or lost a parent or gone through a breakup start to proclaim these facts with the renewed grandiose ceremony of someone who's just gone through religious revelation? It's also a very contentious list of points to say on the Internet. If you interview a billionaire if you who says that all of his money didn't make him happy, or a movie star who said that her fame felt like a prison, the Internet will tear them apart for being ungrateful and out of touch. So not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them. And even more than that, I think for every one of these, if I consider a bit deeper, I can recall a time, including right now, where I convinced myself that I am the exception to the rule.
