Lena Dunham has served up an authentic, empowering take on the pressure to be a better, improved version of yourself after entering a new year and – above all – the problem with the pressure to always be "trying".
In an Instagram post, Dunham recounts a recent run-in with a lady in a pharmacy who was looking at nicotine replacement options, presumably to give up smoking. The lady said to Dunham “you’ve gotta try, right?”, and the actor clearly got to thinking about our pressure to “try” when it comes to the New Year, and whether it's actually good for us.
“That does seem to be the spirit of this holiday, waking up not only to a new year but a new you, transformed from the inside out," she wrote. "You’ve gotta try, right? But I’ve been dogged by a feeling, as real as any of the parts of myself I ‘should’ be remodelling: I’m so f*cking sick of trying.”
“I have to stop drinking because it's making me eat. It's making me break my diet.”
She breaks down what the action of “trying” can do, and how it can often leave us stuck between numerous overwhelming and unrealistic goals.
“I’m not sick of doing, or being, or any other action verbs. But I’m sick of *trying* – the word that evokes a hamster wheel, running and running only to find yourself still here, still stuck or in pain or in fear. Still just trying,” she wrote. "Trying to be sunny but not cloying, healthy but not obsessive, honest but not offensive, trusting but not gullible.
“I’ve tried to be tidy but still express myself, powerful but non-threatening, loyal but not a lap-dog, enlightened without sounding like a self-help book. And every time I’ve failed, I’ve said: 'I’m trying.' Trying to squeeze through the narrow corridor of good habits and successful resolutions.”
We have Lena Dunham to thank for the best alternative perspective on "trying" to be better – she urges us to just “be”.
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She wrote: "But if at once you don’t succeed, what if you didn’t have to try but could just *be* again?
“It’s not giving up – it’s giving in to who you are and what your actual gifts are, your true powers, letting go of the compare and contrast. Maybe that starts with the language we use to describe our efforts.”
It's a beautiful description of self acceptance, and we could all be focusing on that as we grapple with our – albeit well-meaning – New Year's resolutions, which are often made and broken within this month.
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Dunham closes out her inspirational post with a frank but funny outlining of who she is, warts and all – we love it.
"So, new year same me: hello, I’m Lena. I live to write, I have an uncanny knack for names I don’t need to remember, there are eight different shades of green paint in my house and I’ve listened to Prince and wept at least once a month in 2022.
“I tried to allocate my time thoughtfully, greet the day with enthusiasm and not get snippy with my mother. I tried to sleep before midnight and clear my mind by walking. By the metric of trying, I failed. But if I’m just being, then it’s a dance. It’s back and forth, in and out, possible and impossible. And it’s all part of it. Yes, 2023, you can have this dance.”
