← Happier with Gretchen Rubin
Happier with Gretchen Rubin
Little Happier-What Andy Warhol Taught Me About Drama Queens: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature
00:03:32
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- [00:02]
A
Lemonade. I'm Gretchen Rubin, and this is a little happier. I love the work of Andy Warhol. Surprisingly, perhaps. I'm not a huge fan of his visual art, but I love his writings and I love reading interviews he gave. He had a way of looking at the world that's utterly different from anyone else. Sometimes Andy Warhol said something that allows me to understand the world in a different way. For instance, in his book Popism, he reflected on two famous women he knew. Edie Sedgwick and Judy Garland had something in common, a way of getting everyone totally involved in their problems. When you were around them, you forgot you had problems of your own. You got so involved in theirs. They had dramas going right around the clock, and everybody loved to help them through it all. Their problems made them even more attractive. When I read this, I understood better something that had puzzled me for a long time. Why do some people seem to be attracted by someone who is constantly involved in drama, mishaps, conflicts, fact, bad luck and chaos? Of course, misfortune befalls all of us sometimes, and some people have extraordinarily bad luck. But a few do seem to have a flair for dramatic disasters. And some people do seem to be drawn to that drama. I could never understand why, but Warhol explained it. It may be that when we're preoccupied with helping someone else deal with their problems, we don't have to think about dealing with our own problems. When we're helping someone who's doing worse than we are, we forget about our own situation. When we're thinking about someone else, we forget about ourselves. I love proverbs, and I love proverbs of the professions. And I've learned a proverb from computer programmer culture that I find myself quoting all the time. It's not a bug, it's a feature. This proverb is invoked by software developers when they argue that something that might be seen as a mistake or flaw in their program is actually something useful that it has been purposefully created to do. This turns out to be surprisingly applicable to everyday life. It is astonishing to me how often something that one person describes as a bug can also be claimed as a feature. For instance, years ago, a writer friend who was trying to sublet an office space. Part of her pitch was that the office had no phone and no Internet service, so it was perfect for a writer who needed to focus. The lack of these services wasn't a bug, it was a feature. Andy Warhol allowed me to understand that the turmoil around Edie Sedgwick and Judy Garland wasn't a bug. It was a feature that made some people more, not less, attracted to them. I'm Gretchen Rubin and I hope this makes your week a little happier from the Onward Project.
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B
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