{"id":12387,"date":"2026-02-08T20:50:55","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T00:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/samin-nosrat-on-the-faustian-bargain-of-achievement-and-the-simple-substance-of-the-good-life-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T20:50:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T00:50:55","slug":"samin-nosrat-on-the-faustian-bargain-of-achievement-and-the-simple-substance-of-the-good-life-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/samin-nosrat-on-the-faustian-bargain-of-achievement-and-the-simple-substance-of-the-good-life-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Samin Nosrat on the Faustian Bargain of Achievement and the Simple Substance of the Good Life \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

We live in a bipolar epoch \u2014 on one end, the blamethirsty finger of cancel culture and politicized othering; on the other, the zeal for designating people, real human beings with real human lives, as secular saints expected to give us unremitting consolation, inspiration, and encouragement. Both are cages that dehumanize the caged, negating the tessellated variousness of their personhood, the complexity of their human experience. All the while, our cultural mythos of success is skinning life of joy on the crucifix of achievement. <\/p>\n

Of all the ills that require our constant vigilance and courage, these three \u2014 ambition, blame, and worship \u2014 menace modern life more perniciously, because more subtly, than all the rest combined.<\/p>\n

I have heard no one address their interplay more candidly and more vulnerably than chef and author Samin Nosrat<\/a> in her contribution to Yo-Yo & Friends: In Conversation on Living Creatively<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Samin Nosrat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWho serves best doesn\u2019t always understand,\u201d wrote<\/a> the Nobel-winning Polish poet Czes\u0142aw Mi\u0142osz. With her oceanic laugh and sunlit vivacity, Samin has been serving more than food for two decades \u2014 she has served, for millions, a model of being a conscientious objector to the warfare of cynicism destroying the modern spirit. She has also suffered the struggle, the strangeness, of being regarded as \u201ca bringer of joy,\u201d being expected to play that role while wading through a thick inner darkness, the tension between wanting to be of service but also needing the freedom to meet sorrow on its own terms \u2014 not the performative suffering and competitive trauma rewarded in our time, but that most inward, private, and subterranean current of soul-ache that demands everything of us and shows nothing. <\/p>\n

In trying to find a way \u201cto be truthful and authentic, and also share goodness,\u201d Samin found herself reckoning with how she came to be the way she is:<\/p>\n

\n

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there has been so much sorrow and grief and loss in my life, from the very beginning. I\u2019ve had to actively orient myself, almost as a survival mechanism, toward goodness and toward joy, toward love and friendship and nature and beauty, just to make it. And that is what I want to put out into the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Card from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days<\/a><\/em>, also available as a stand-alone print<\/a> and stationery cards<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And yet she found herself in a void of joy, puzzled by how this was possible given how hard she had worked at her life:<\/p>\n

\n

What happened was I spent my life in a singleminded pursuit of excellence, with the flawed (probably subconscious) belief that if I achieved the right combination of thing, that would make me feel okay, make me feel happy, make my parents finally proud of me. And then, somehow, I did achieve all the things I set out to do \u2014 and more \u2014 and it sucked the life out of me\u2026 There was an emptiness inside of me \u2014 I did all these things, I held up my end of the bargain, and it didn\u2019t work. So now what\u2026 <\/p>\n

I had to just sit there and be in that pain.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Burnout is often our best catalyst for transformation<\/a>. But for Samin, that pain collided with another, vaster and more primal, until the two ricocheted into a revelation that turned her life around. Just as she was crouching there in the darkness of her burnout, her father suffered a traumatic brain injury. As he lay dying, they had the difficult conversations they had never faced. She reflects:<\/p>\n

\n

More than anything, watching him die in that way really brought me face to face with my own mortality and gave me a sense of such clarity that time is so precious and that the way I had been looking at life\u2026 \u201cIf I I\u2019m good now and work hard now, then one day I\u2019ll be okay, one day I\u2019ll be happy, one day I\u2019ll have joy, one day I\u2019ll cash this in.\u201d And I realized, oh no, no, no \u2014 there is no cashing it in: You have to spend it as you go.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Echoing Annie Dillard\u2019s searing observation that \u201chow we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,\u201d<\/a> she adds:<\/p>\n

\n

That really reoriented me to this sense that every day is my life\u2026 All of the small choices I make \u2014 that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing. And I have to have joy\u2026 And, actually, all the sort of boring and menial parts of my life are where, if I just make some small shifts, I can have a good life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Couple this fragment of Yo-Yo & Friends<\/em><\/strong><\/a> \u2014 which features five other conversations about the creative life (including one with me) \u2014 with the pioneering psychologist Carl R. Rogers on the three elements of the good life<\/a>, then revisit Mario Benedetti\u2019s magnificent \u201cDefense of Joy.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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