The Problem with Being a Person: How an Existentialish Philosophy Can Ground Us in Modern Chaos

by Talia Pollock Narrated by Talia Pollock

Overview

Escape the race to happiness, build a life of value, and resist the pull of self-help

You've heard this story: outwardly, woman was living the dream. Inwardly, woman was drowning in despair. It's what happened next that sets this tale apart.

Many of us go through life believing that something about us is not normal enough. So, we devote ourselves to the endless pursuit of self-improvement. That's what Talia Pollock decided to do. In her quest to feel better, Talia Pollock got seduced by self-help trends that offered fleeting solace but failed to soothe the depths of her inner turmoil. Conventional remedies, like medication and therapy, provided a semblance of relief but didn't ease the angst she felt inside.

It wasn't until she discovered Existentialist philosophy that she discovered that what we're told is abnormal is actually entirely human, and it's our attempts to cure ourselves of our humanity which will eventually drive us mad.

Echoing the timeless wisdom of philosophers and the timely research of social scientists, Pollock offers a modern take on finding the courage to create your own version of satisfaction.

Pollock's sincere retelling of her own experiences urges readers to

• question conventional notions of happiness
• embrace contentment as a lasting source of well-being
• navigate the challenges of a comfortably uncomfortable life

Whether you're grappling with existential questions, seeking to break free from societal expectations, or yearning for a deeper sense of fulfillment, The Problem with Being a Person offers a powerful message for prioritizing self-acceptance over self-improvement.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

A hilarious look at what it means to radically accept yourself and your place in the world.”
—Emily Esfahani Smith, author of The Power of Meaning

"An illuminating and genuinely helpful look at how we can embrace uncertainty and inner chaos to move towards meaning in our lives. In a society filled with confusing prescriptions and contradictions about happiness, Talia Pollock's existential-ish philosophy offers a framework to find the courage and curiosity for self-reflection and direction. For anyone who has ever wondered if they're getting life right, this refreshing book will both comfort and inspire."
—Madeleine Dore, author of I Didn't Do the Thing Today

“Fun, funny, and touching. It’s like your new best friend telling you stories about how vibing in “existentialish” ways has made her life better, and can make yours better too. Fabulous read!”
—Skye Cleary, author of How to Live a Good Life

Product Details

BN ID:	2940191041445
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1

Normal°

We were going on hour three of our Zoom hypnobirthing class when Cynthia explained that a relaxed throat equals a relaxed vagina.

"Once you've reached ten centimeters of dilation," she said, "you should start deep breathing through your nose all the way to the lower back of your throat and down through your body behind baby." I closed my eyes to practice visualizing my baby gliding out of me like a kid on the blue tarp of a slip-and-slide positioned perfectly on a bright green grassy backyard hill.

It must have been the image of our daughter's ejection out of me that had ejected Jesse off the couch, down the hall, and into my office, which we had begun converting into our nursery, with a tape measure in tow. When the virtual birthing class ended, I headed for bed to listen to my peaceful-delivery mantras and visualize my relaxed vagina as I fell into a deep slumber. As I passed by him, I caught a glimpse of Jesse maniacally taking measurements.

The next morning, we rendezvoused at the kitchen table, where he, straight-faced like he was presenting possible solutions to the very distressing beaver overpopulation problem continually brought up at our small town's meetings, walked me through his assessment of Our Floor Situation.

"I didn't know we had a Floor Situation," I said as I shoveled cereal into my mouth.

"Option A," he replied sternly after sipping his coffee and placing the light gray mug with black, ironic "This meeting sucks" lettering on it, on the table. "Pay a ridiculous amount of money to install carpet wall to wall."

"Uh-huh," I replied.

"Option B," he offered with a furrowed brow. "Get a still very expensive custom-sized rug to fill the entire floor since it's not a standard size."

"OK," I said, wondering if the difference between a custom rug and a custom carpet is like the difference between a padded bra and breast implants, where one just lays on top while the other gets permanently affixed.

"And option C," Jesse asserted. "Order a cheapo, wrongly sized, crappy toxic rug [my words, not his], sight unseen."

I paused-the amount of time I guesstimated gave the impression that I was considering Our Floor Situation with as much thoughtfulness as I'd given to my Grow Out My Terrible Layers Cut by a Dangerously Persuasive New Hair Stylist Who Said They'd Make My Hair Easier to Style but Was Full of Shit Conundrum. Then I told Jesse that I agreed option A seemed like an unnecessary use of funds, but I couldn't offer input on options B and C without actually touching rugs to understand the differences better.

He looked at me as if I had said we were out of dish soap while he was eating off a fork I'd let my dog lick clean instead.

I reminded him that I can't make decisions without involving all of my senses. He should've remembered when I couldn't pick a bathtub without getting into it in the store (he was in the right to stop me from getting nude in Home Depot for the full bathing effect) and how I couldn't choose a wedding cake without three tastings or a mattress without a scabies scare.

He looked at me and said, "Why do you need to go roll around on a bunch of carpet samples to make a decision?"

Five free-shipping days later, I'm rolling around on a gray, lightly toxic carpet with off-white embossed stars and a ninety-day return policy.

On the other side of the nursery, Jesse, too, is face down on the carpet. His left eye, cheek, and measuring tape are sideways in a critical investigation of which increment of one eighth of an inch would be the primo thickness for a rug pad over which the closet door can still open.

I turn over to lie on my back, where my daughter's crib will soon be stationed, and my eyes meet the ceiling. There's a crack and some faded markings where the former owner's light fixtures have been patched up.

Suddenly I time-traveled to my childhood room with my younger self back on my bed. All these years later, the image of my off-white ceiling covered in stucco popcorn stayed intact in my mind's eye like an old friend. And with that ceiling above came a familiar feeling within: a pit in my stomach, a lump in my throat, and a question in my head-am I broken?

I embarked on a mental road trip, bringing myself back below all sorts of ceilings from my past. I saw my first college dorm room, where the ceiling reflected my loneliness; then my first college apartment, with a new view but the same feeling; and then my second college apartment, too.

I flashed back to a couple of college boys' beds, where I'd stare up, dehydrated and dizzy and full of Bud Light, wondering if this was the "college dream" I'd been told to expect.

I saw ceilings of summer where, amid the endless black, above me was the moon and some shooting stars and the overwhelming feeling of insignificance.

I recalled the ceiling above early career-girl Talia, which reflected the ambition in my eyes right back at me, and then the later successful Talia, suddenly comfortable with the two essential forms of currencies (dollars and followers), who gazed up wondering if this is what success was supposed to feel like. Maybe success is like cilantro, I thought. Maybe to some people it just tastes like soap.

When I think about the ceilings I've looked at, I recall the thoughts that kept me awake. Sometimes I'd be brainstorming how I could try again to fix myself. Other times I'd be overcome by shame for how broken I was. I'd lay in feelings of fear that I was beyond repair or send secular cries up there for help.

I can't remember the first time I felt broken. I think it was during moments I'd question why something that was supposed to make me happy did not make me happy. Eventually this incongruency built up enough that it became unignorable, strengthening in all sorts of surprising ways.

Like every time I'd pass a magazine headline at the grocery store checkout counter telling me "Three Ways to Be Happier NOW!" I didn't need to be a word nerd to understand that the -er on the end of happy insinuated that I wasn't currently happy enough. I also didn't need the added anxiety that if I didn't get that magazine, I would miss out on the three ways to be happier and would be less happy forever. And this was just a trip to the grocery store.

Sometimes I'd brainstorm what more I needed to do to get it right, to feel satisfied. Work harder? Have more gratitude? Even though none of them were mirrors (except for that one Sigma Chi fraternity guy's), those ceilings seemed to reflect my deepest truth right back at me every night: I don't matter. And then, if I don't matter, what does?

I've spent much of my life hoping to find an answer to my inscrutable angst by connecting the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, and I'm far from alone.

One day, my daughter is going to lie on her back staring up at this ceiling, inevitably feeling broken in some way. How many hours will she spend with this view, her eyes concentrated on the white plaster, wrestling with herself? Will she, too, wish to "just be normal"? Oh god. Would sorrow over her own insignificance take space in her sweet head like it did mine?

And I got to thinking: How do we wind up looking at ceilings for clues on how to fix ourselves? What gets us to that place?

I pictured my beautiful daughter lying here someday looking up at the same cracks and rings in this ceiling. I imagined a perfect little human lying on her back, snuggly swaddled like a burrito, with her perfect teeny eyes squeezed closed. I envisioned her growing inside a world that, no matter what, will tell her she needs to fix herself. Tears welled in my own eyes as I imagined that one day she would gaze at this ceiling afraid that she'll never fix herself enough. Wondering how she could change so that she could feel happy. Learning to doubt me when I'd say, "You're enough just the way you are."

I wanted to shield my daughter from allowing the world to wind her up like a windup toy and instruct her to march toward . . . something-ANYTHING. And I wanted to block my baby's minuscule ears from being told the ways she's broken.

Looking back, I realized it was almost like once I fit into kid shoes, the kind with soles that actually had treads, I was shoved into a wedding conga line and required to keep up with everyone else moving forward, forced smiles on all of our faces.

Cynthia, the hypnobirthing instructor, had explained all sorts of things about bringing a baby into the world. One thing she hadn't touched on, however, was how our perfect baby would inevitably grow to learn her ABCs and 123s and to feel broken. Is dissatisfaction in our tap water?

At that moment, I resolved to understand how I could help exempt my daughter from a life of lying awake, counting her flaws like sheep. Driven by that concern, I committed to not letting her throw away a minute trying to be someone she's not-or feeling shame about the someone she is. I don't think I could handle the image of my daughter lulling herself to sleep with the soundtrack of self-criticism, or worse, self-hatred. Because far too much of my own life has been wasted staring achingly at the ceiling berating myself and believing I was broken, and I needed to figure out how to make her apple fall many, many football fields away from my tree.

So, in the time it took to go from imagining her crib to seeing her stand in it (three years), I got down and dirty in both mental health research and diapers. I became physically and mentally exhausted from both a lack of sleep and an excess of philosophy. I shed tears of joy for the innate perfection of my child (and all children) and tears of fear for her (and their) future in a culture that is getting increasingly better at convincing them the opposite.

I believe I've patched together a coherent ethos that can set her, me, you, and future generations free. This book is a little longer than Goodnight Moon, but I hope it can have a similar effect: a peaceful night's sleep dreaming of bears in chairs and kittens with mittens instead of ways to improve yourself in order to be happier and more normal.

Normal

I used to sit around and wonder what life would be like if I were normal. When you're normal, do single socks never vanish in the wash? Does dairy never give you diarrhea? How do you scan a bar for all the abnormals, lest you buy one of them a drink?!

Our culture's threshold for being abnormal is criminally low. You're not normal if becoming a parent isn't in your future. Getting a shiny engagement ring didn't bring you fulfillment? Abnormal! And you're off your goddamn rocker if you're content with your career. Don't you want more? You have so much potential!

Normal is the benchmark around which we orient ourselves. It's like how 32 degrees is the point that separates freezing from not: there's Normal° and there's not, and we've learned to stick a thermometer in everything about ourselves and calculate our degrees away from that point.

Now, let's not confuse Normal° with conventional. Particularly post-coronavirus pandemic, what used to be seen as "unconventional lifestyles" are today much more widely accepted. More and more people are working hybrid, a huge change from only a few years ago when the conventional lifestyle was to go to a workplace every day. More couples are opting for no weddings, minimal weddings, elopement weddings, or Zoom weddings (because nothing says "I love you" like "Can you hear me now?"). And a space for one's pronouns has been added to everything from working professionals' business email signatures to hospital medical forms.

Unconventional is different from abnormal. Abnormality can be defined as a deviation from "ideal" mental health, while unconventional pertains to deviations from common cultural lifestyle choices.

The distinction lies in intentionally versus inadvertently deviating from societal norms.

Today, if a ten-year-old boy wants to wear a unicorn helmet and tutu, he's unconventional and mainly accepted. But if he doesn't smile when he's given that unicorn helmet as a gift from his aunt Mary, well, he's worryingly not normal.

The awful paradox is that we often don't know we're abnormal until we're told we're abnormal, mainly by the constant influx of help we're offered (or sold) to fix us. And frighteningly, the message is covert. You can be kicking back with a kombucha and a 20/20 rerun and suddenly get a pop-up on your phone that says, "Seven Signs You Don't Exercise Hard Enough," and now you realize that, damn, you're totally exercising less hard than Normal°.

"Upgrade Your Mindset: How to Think like a Success" > I must not be thinking like a success.

"Master Your Time: Productivity Hacks for a More Fulfilling Life" > My life isn't fulfilling enough. I'm not good at time management. I need to be more productive.

"Reinvent Yourself: Strategies for a Fresh Start" > You're right, I need to scratch this whole "me" thing and start over at this self thing.

"Unlock Your Inner Confidence: Tips for Boosting Self-Esteem" > Am I not confident enough? Are others more confident than me?

"Maximize Your Happiness: Simple Ways to Find Joy Every Day" > I do not find a normal amount of joy each day.

Whatever way it's framed-don't, mistake, wrong, abnormal, better-the avenues of help are the same. Fix. Improve. Change. GET CLOSER TO NORMAL°.

In his beautiful memoir, The Reason I Jump, Naoki Higashida shares: "When I was small, I didn't even know that I was a kid with special needs. How did I find out? By other people telling me that I was different from everyone else, and that this was a problem." The subtitle of Higashida's book is The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism, so the difference he's depicting takes place on what is presently named the neurodiversity spectrum, which is an organizational tool for the various degrees of neurological abnormality. "True enough," Higashida acknowledges. "It was very hard for me to act like a normal person."

But whether we're talking about being neurotypical or emotionally typical, the only way to be atypical is to accept that there is a "typical."

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