Avril Lavigne and Tolstoy on the human experience
attempts to discover the ecosystems of other minds
We were emo kids
I love diving into people’s heads. And I believe Avril Lavigne does too—
This song has haunted me since my preteen years when the album first came out; haunted me long past Zebra markers on burnt CD days, long after scratching crushes’ names on school desks, after hot goth fantasies in black lace were thrown away. I still think of this song even after my music tastes drove me to abandon pop-punk, something that I’ll be too embarrassed to admit to have listened to1, much less affected me, but actually defined my youth in a way no other genre did. The lines of the chorus still waft back into my head from time to time—
how does it feel / to be / different from me / are we the same
how does it feel / to be / different from me / are we the same
how does it feel
How does it feel to be different from me was what I was wondering throughout my teenage years and had never had an answer for. Stuff like—
Do feelings feel the same
Are our baseline moods the same
Is the atmosphere I sense in the air the same as the one you are sensing
Does thought run through our heads half-formed the same way
Is the timbre of our lived experience the same
How do I find out?
I can talk to people and ask them questions (as I often do) like “how does it feel to be [insert experience/job/specific moment]?”
But, the catch is, people only present their speech, actions and body language to you, which may or may not be a reflection of their inner world.
The closest I’d gotten to understanding what the inside view was like for others was with a good friend of mine. Whenever we’d meet up, we would have dinner, then after dinner move to sit at a cafe, both of us facing the window which overlooked a train station, and would talk until the cafe closed, watching our words float around the trains that came and went.
Conversation after the 2-3 hour mark flowed uninhibited, and towards the end thought matched thought unfiltered, with us prefacing what we were saying with “I’d never told anyone this before, but,”. Like mind speaking to mind directly, I thought; a peek into someone else’s inner self.
I don’t specifically remember what we’d talked about, but I’d always kept those memories as the closest I’ve gotten to connecting and understanding a fellow human being. We’re still good friends now, but recently when I brought this up with her she said she didn’t remember it at all— the cafe, our seats or our words.
I know she values our friendship too, but perhaps in a different way. But how different, exactly?
Reading and the inner dimension
Reading is another way of diving into someone else’s head and seeing the world from their perspective.
Fiction contains an inner dimension that daily interaction with people does not– an in on the thoughts and feelings of characters (and thus the humans who wrote them by extension). But still, most characters I’d encountered in reading, though great and memorable, are only gross outlines of humans and not fully fleshed out. So my perennial question of how does it feel, are we the same becomes irrelevant, usually, and I continue reading simply to enjoy the ride of the plot.
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Many novels are worn down by phrases that get in the way of actual communication and understanding. For example, the chinoiserie of “our courtesans were… elegant, seductively coy, tantalizingly elusive, and skilled in singing…,” (Amy Tan’s The Valley of Amazement), or, from Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, when ultra-rich cute boyfriend invites middle-class girlfriend to visit his family– “Rachel peered into her teacup, wishing she could divine something from the stray leaves pooled at the bottom of the deep golden Assam”.
If a hypothetical cute rich boyfriend asked me to travel to his home country with him, my reaction wouldn’t be peering into a teacup wanting to divine something from the tea-leaves?! I get what the author is trying to say, but the character’s reaction is unconvincing to me, and hence, will only be a character.2
Even the modernists like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, who tried to recreate thought through stream-of-consciousness writing, didn’t provide me with a definite answer of what it felt like to live as another person. In Ulysses by James Joyce (which I haven’t finished to this day) mere seconds of thought are stretched out into paragraphs that take (much) longer to read and are encumbered with obscure references, which makes understanding an arduous, academic process instead of an intuitive one. A soul can’t speak directly to another soul if you have to look through five footnotes to understand what they’re saying.3
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I had somewhat given up upon my search, resigned to never knowing how it feels to be somebody else, until I opened Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
Reading Anna Karenina was like turning me inside out. The characters weren’t only characters, but fully formed humans who walked off the page and pointed out feelings and thoughts in me that had been buried in my subconscious.
For example, do you guys have childhood friends you meet on occasion but don’t really talk to very much because both of you had gone their different ways?
If you were to ask me how I feel about meeting such a friend, I would probably give you a “meh” and a shrug.
But this is how Tolstoy describes two childhood friends, Levin and Oblonsky, meeting each other—
They were fond of each other in spite of the difference in their characters and tastes, as friends who have known each other since their boyhood mostly are.
But in spite of that, as it often happens with men who have chosen different callings, though they might justify each other’s careers in discussing it, in their hearts they despised it. Each believed that the life he himself led was the only real life and the life led by his friend was nothing but an illusion.
But Tolstoy’s description is indeed the exact way I would feel, and my friend would feel. It took a 19th century Russian author to accurately describe the grey stuff that lies in us, between us, and between replies on Whatsapp.
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Another time Tolstoy did some subconscious iceberg lifting was when I spent a summer volunteering at a kindergarten. I would talk to the kids, tell them off, and play with them. But I felt like I could never hold their attention for long, and they ran off quickly, distracted.
Then I remembered how Levin interacted with children–
The children did not know Levin very well… but they did not show toward him any of that strange shyness and hostility children so often feel towards grownups who pretend to like them and for which they are so often painfully punished.
Any kind of pretense may deceive the cleverest and most perspicacious of men; but the most backward child will recognize it, however skillfully it may be disguised, and be repelled by it.
Whatever shortcomings Levin may have had, there was not a trace of pretense in him and that was why the children showed him friendliness.
This was why they didn’t pay attention to me. Not innately drawn to children but feeling the need to demonstrate as such, being a loving member of the human race, most of my ministrations (all intoned in a high singsong voice) was actually for my and other observing adults’ benefit. I only realised this after reading the passage– I didn’t actually want to play with the children, I wanted to look like I enjoyed playing with them.
After Tolstoy called my bluff, I changed my approach to interacting with them, making sure I felt sincere about what I was saying before saying it to the children. There were immediate results– I received a lot more reciprocity, and stickers.
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The truths about the human experience in Anna Karenina present themselves longitudinally across time, latent in the pages, rising when the moment in your life arises.
After getting married earlier this year, I remembered a feeling that Kitty, one of the characters in Anna Karenina, felt upon getting married and I went back through the pages to find it, like finding a friend you suddenly become close to because you find yourselves in the same stage in life–
She was preparing herself for the period of activity which must come to her when at one and the same time she would be wife to her husband, mistress of the house, and bear, nurse, and bring up his children… she knew it instinctively and, preparing herself for this great task, did not reproach herself for the moments of lighthearted and happy love she now enjoyed while gaily building her nest for the future.
If I met someone from 19th century Russia, notwithstanding the language barrier, we would probably have nothing to say to each other. Erm do you hunt? Do you drink borscht?4 But apparently we’re more alike than I thought.
This novel, to me, is the ultimate cure for loneliness. It is diving into the head of a 19th century Russian aristocrat and finding the same saltiness and the same warm blue mood; the same stones on the ocean floor that embed our subconscious and the same flicker of thought-like fish that dart by.
If the inside of a 19th century Russian head is comparable to the inside of a 21st century Hong Kong head, two entities which couldn’t, externally, be more different, I’m pretty sure that the fabric of human experience is >90% relatable (with the remaining 10% lost to external cultural factors, or gaps in subjectivity and perception).
90% is enough. It’s enough for me to work with, when writing to convey human experience. If I can find the most authentic version of life in a novel written by someone separated by culture, time and space, I know that human experience is universal. That I can talk about my experiences, no matter how subconscious or infinitesimal or specifically cultural they are, and other people can relate too.
So, to answer Avril’s question and my associated teenage metaphysical loneliness, how does it feel / are we the same?
My answer is— maybe not everyone will, but at least to some people, yes, yes, yes, it feels the same.
Thank you for diving with me writing friends and giving me so many tips and words of encouragement!!! <333
, , ,Thank you for reading 🩷🩷🩷
Have you guys even had a similar ‘aha’ experience that made you feel like your mind was similar to another person’s? I would love to hear them in the comments below~
“Despite teenage girls having a great track record for being the first to like “the best rock stars of all time” (The Beatles, Elvis, The Rolling Stones), for some reason you are not a “real band” until men like you.”
“I started to intentionally de-code my internal patriarchal programming during COVID.”
I’m not saying these novels aren’t good novels, but I suppose they are strong in different ways— to entertain, or to educate, perhaps.
I looove Virginia Woolf though!!! But maybe I’ll save that for another essay.
According to
, they serve Russian borscht at local diners (cha chaan tengs as they’re called in Cantonese). So now I know what to talk about when I meet a 19th century Russian. For those who are so inclined, there’s even a youtube video explaining how the Russian Borscht ended up in Hong Kong—
i loved reading this! so introspective and beautifully written. we may encounter many but connect with very few. and being able to find someone we connect with, is truly a precious feeling. can't wait to read your next post clare ^^
I used to always opt for the Russian Borscht for my uni set breakfast...
Great stuff, Clare :)