"I am what I am and I have to accept myself": Lessons from The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

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Books can do incredible things, can't they? One of the arguments lit lovers like me tend to make in favor of literature and the humanities is that they help make us more human, maybe even better humans. There have even been studies about how novels can help us learn empathy by showing us situations we have not been in personally and causing us to identify with the characters in the story even when their lives are vastly different from our own.

I'm currently somewhere in the middle of reading the second book in the Neapolitan Trilogy, The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante. I've been writing a review of the book as I go, but I'll save that for another post. Earlier today, as I listened, (I get most of my literary fixes from audiobooks,) I rewound at a couple of different points and made a note of a line that really struck me. The narrator and main character, Elena, recounts her turbulent friendship with her childhood friend Lila over a period of many years. At this point in the story, the two girls are teenagers; Elena is a high school student in love with an older boy, Nino and Lila is married to an abusive man from their neighborhood. Elena struggles to make sense of the different events and stages of her relationship with Lila over the years.

After a particularly difficult summer, which I won't describe to avoid spoilers, Elena strives to come to terms with her own reality, rediscover a sense of self as she prepares to return to school, leaving Lila behind once again.

"I said to myself everyday: I am what I am and I have to accept myself."

This book was already piercing me right through the heart on every (audio) page. Elena's retrospective analysis of her life as a teenager could be me - if only I were as skilled a writer and as keen a self-observer as Elena Ferrante creates in her protagonist.

Elena has so many insecurities and is for so long, so easily manipulated by her best friend, it brings me back to so many of my own painful and humiliating moments, not only as a teenager, but as a young, and not so young adult. I'm 40 years old and I wrote down the above quote because I thought it was such a simple, perfect reminder that there is only pain and suffering in concentrating on what I did wrong or hating myself for the terrible crime of being human.

Self-love is a wonderful concept, but can be so difficult to do. Or maybe we can do it when we apply ourselves, but we forget in moments of crisis and automatically head down the old familiar path of self-deprecation and self-loathing. In those moments, I'm going to try to remember that "I am what I am and I have to accept myself." I might add "and forgive myself" to that.

A little later, as she tries to shake off the shame she feels from letting herself be influenced by others to the point of no longer knowing who she really was or what she wanted for herself, Elena vows to herself, "Now everything that I was, I wanted to get from myself." I am taking this quote a tiny bit out of context, but the words hit me nonetheless. It may not be possible to be totally unaffected by the demands and expectations of others, but knowing ourselves and our desires is something we can all strive to do.

That's the little gem of wisdom I took away from a good book today.

What is the most powerful thing you've read lately?