Volume 3, Issue 76: Solitaire
"Took too long to see I was wrong to believe in me only."
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I have tried, over the last five-plus (!!!) years, to have this newsletter serve as a place of commiseration, a warm place without judgment where we can all come together and grapple with the fundamental challenges and conflicts, and the inherent wonder, of being alive. It is a place for calm sanity—for me, and hopefully for you.
But sometimes, one falls prey to one’s own weakness. Sometimes, one just needs to rant a little.
There’s one phrase that makes a little part of my soul die every time I hear it. This phrase is “Must Be Nice.”
No one says “must be nice” when they are happy for someone. If you are happy for someone, you say something like “good for them,” or “couldn’t happen to a better person.” You only say “must be nice” if someone has something in their life that you do not believe they deserve to have, you want to have but don’t, or both. When someone says “must be nice,” they are not talking about another person. They are talking about themselves.
One of the most pivotal moments of getting older is when you figure out that what’s ahead of you is more important than what’s behind you, whatever what’s ahead of you might turn out to be. What you thought was going to happen is not what happened: So now what? Adulthood is, by its very design, disappointing. As it turns out, I did not turn out to be a Major League Baseball player, or an astronaut. Being a child is to not know precisely what you want in the world but to firmly believe that, whatever it is, you will someday get it. Being an adult is recognizing that in order to get what you want, you have to know what it is. And even that is far from a guarantee, and besides, what you want is constantly changing because of your life’s circumstances anyway. (That’s part of growing up too: Rolling with the punches.) There are many things in this world that I wish I had that I do not. What matters is appreciating what I do have, how I got those things, and how I can make sure I continue to hold onto them.
To walk around saying “must be nice” is to walk around embittered for the dumbest, basest possible reason: Because someone has something that you do not. There is such a sneer to the phrase. Must be nice. If someone has something, they should not have it; I should have it. But I don’t. So no one should have it. Whatever it is does not actually matter: It can be money, it can be a material possession, it can be a nice house, it can be a sharp jawline, it can be a full head of hair, it can be the care of a loved one, it can simply the fact they someone got a good night’s sleep the evening before. “Must be nice” is a complaint, and a lament, but at its core, it’s self-centered nihilism: If I don’t have something, no one should. I am not happy, and if someone else is, well, they shouldn’t be.
I remember, when I first moved to New York City 21 years ago, being taken aback by how angry every middle-aged person I saw on the subway seemed to be. They weren’t snarling or punching people or anything. But they were so perpetually irritated. It was that the frustration seemed to waft off them, that everyone else on the planet had been put there specifically to inconvenience them, and only them. They seemed so dissatisfied. They seemed pissed off that they were even on the subway at all, as if there was supposed to be a private jet that had been intended to take them where they were going, and they had somehow missed it. They looked like travelers who had meant to take a non-stop flight to Aruba and had all their flights postponed and canceled and diverted and they’d ended up in suburban Akron and that was just where they lived now, forever. It wasn’t that I saw my future in them: I was too young and stupid to worry that I would turn out to be that angry person when I was middle-aged, because when you are young, you don’t think you’ve ever going to be middle-aged. (I sort of refuse to believe I am middle-aged now.) It was just jarring to see them. What had happened to them? What had gone wrong?
I feel like I understand it a little more now. It’s not that things have inherently gone wrong for the “must be nice” people, though of course things are always going wrong, for everyone, all the time—that’s what life is, things going wrong and twisting off in strange directions whenever you’re least expecting it. It’s just that there is always this quiet sense that there was supposed to be more. Part of being an adult is understanding that just because you once believed there would be “more” does not mean there is. And that all there is this, right in front of you. You can either grab a hold of it and take it, or you can let whatever future you imagined for yourself sit in the pit of your stomach and eat you alive.
“Must be nice” also inherently discounts the reality that life is hard for everyone, all the time, no matter their circumstances. It assumes that life is ever easy for anyone, or, more to the point, that if your life is difficult, that means everyone else’s life is somehow simpler and more manageable—as if the universe has opened up and chucked a water balloon solely at you. To believe that the world is turning out wonderfully for everybody but you is the definition of self-absorption. Life is hard. Life totally sucks sometimes! But all we can control is how we react to it.
There are obvious inequities in the world. Someone’s always going to have a one-up on somebody else, somewhere. The person saying “must be nice” has a life that, without question, is the envy of literally billions of people on this planet. There is always a bigger fish and, besides, life is not a ranking of people by the things they have anyway. Everyone is searching for something; everybody is forever in need. We are all forever seeking. To sneer “must be nice” at another person is to tell on yourself. It is about not just a lack of joy in your own life, but a desire for the rest of the world to share that lack of joy. It’s good to be happy for people. It’s actually a pretty good route to happiness yourself.
Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.
The Life of the Unvaccinated American Adult Is About to Become Very Difficult, Medium. This one got around a lot this week, but I’m not so much advocating a specific position as I am noting that the frustration most vaccinated people feel toward most unvaccinated people appears to be manifesting itself in actual policy. And that that was surely inevitable.
The Joy of Watching Sports You Do Not Understand, New York. It’s sort of freeing, I think.
The Best Baseball Players at Every Age, MLB.com. Many old Cardinals.
DC Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. Updated with The Suicide Squad.
Baseball Rivalries, Ranked, MLB.com. Another oldie but goodie.
Internet Nostalgia: Bros Icing Bros, Medium. It is very annoying when a stupid meme peaks … right when you are getting married.
The Thirty: Every Team’s Best … Olympian! MLB.com. Love for Jason Simontacchi.
The Odds of Dying of 17 Different Things, If You Are Vaccinated, Medium. Sometimes I like to do little listicles with these.
PODCASTS
Grierson & Leitch, discussing “The Green Knight,” “Stillwater” and “Jungle Cruise.”
Seeing Red, Bernie and I discussed another empty trade deadline.
Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we are back. We did our big Texas-Oklahoma-SEC show, and we’re back weekly through, jeez, December.
LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK
“I Don’t See A Way Out Of This,” Craig Jenkins, New York. Jenkins won a freaking Pulitzer a few months ago, and just finished up an absolutely insane week, writing this incredible piece about homophobia in hip-hop, along with:
A fair but pretty devastating look at the entertaining-but-facile Woodstock 99 documentary.
A thorough, moving feature about the final Prince album, Welcome 2 America.
That’s four jaw-droppingly terrific pieces in a week. That’s just showing off.
BOOK I’VE READ THAT YOU SHOULD READ
“Big Game: The NFL in Dangerous Times,” Mark Leibovich. This book, by political reporter (and The Will Leitch Show guest) Leibovich, is hilarious and sharp and probably deserves to be the best-selling NFL book of all time. A grand read now that football is starting back up. NFL owners are just the biggest dipshits.
ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!
Write me at:
Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603
CURRENTLY LISTENING TO
“Full Speed Ahead,” The Sundogs. This is my friend Will’s band The Sundogs—they do the music for the Seeing Red podcast, and Will has to deal with me texting him incessantly through every Cardinals game—and they just released a new album, “Embroidered Rose,” last week. (You can listen to it on Spotify right here.) I went to their record release party last week, and it was the first live music I’d heard since February 2020. It was very good for the soul.
Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.
Also, this was absolutely crazy:
If you’re in NYC, get a picture of it for me: The last day it’s up is Sunday, so, you know, last chance. I am very sad I did not get to go to New York to get my own picture of it, but hey, I’m sure having a huge NYC billboard promoting one’s book happens every time you write one.
Have a great weekend, all.
Best,
Will
Citizensof the Green Room was also great!
I read that book! Also his other one This Town. Both were great!