On intellectual independence, the art of observation, and the peculiar business of being human

I recently stumbled upon Fran Lebowitz. Not in a New York bookstore, where I imagine she’d prefer to be discovered, but on Netflix, watching Martin Scorsese revel in her observations in Pretend It’s a City.

Within minutes, I was hooked.

There she was, with her surly self, wandering through New York, delivering opinions with the precision of a scalpel and the temperament of someone who had long since exhausted her patience with human foolishness. Scorsese was laughing. I was laughing. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I recognized a rather unruly part of myself.

My inner Fran wanted to come out to play. Unfortunately, she occasionally needs supervision because she tends to say something inappropriate or hurtful. I’m in charge for now, but she’s a force to be reckoned with. You can ask some of my family and friends. Eeck!

Back to Lebowitz, what fascinates me about her isn’t simply her wit, though her command of language is extraordinary. It’s her intellectual independence. She seems spectacularly uninterested in being agreeable for the sake of agreement, and she doesn’t soften an observation because someone might find it uncomfortable. At 5 feet 10 inches, she doesn’t seem concerned with whether her opinions are fashionable, popular, or universally understood.

She thinks something and says it. The rest of humanity can sort itself out. For me, that feels deliciously liberating. Yet the more I watched, the more I began to think about the distinction between admiring someone’s way of thinking and wanting to inhabit it entirely.

Fran and I, while perhaps sharing a certain intolerance for nonsense, approach the peculiar business of being human rather differently. Fran seems to enjoy delivering the observation, whereas I enjoy interrogating it.

She can deliver a devastating assessment of human behavior, wrap it in a perfectly constructed sentence, and move on. I tend to linger. I want to know why people behave as they do, what experiences shaped their thinking, what they might be protecting, and whether my interpretation is missing something essential.

I rarely find an answer that doesn’t generate another question. This is both a blessing and an occasionally exhausting way to move through the world. I have always been fascinated by people who notice what others overlook. The seemingly insignificant details of everyday life can reveal extraordinary things about our psychology, values, fears, and the stories we construct to explain ourselves.

Which leads me to … Why do some people crave emotional intimacy while others retreat from it? Why do we cling to beliefs that no longer serve us? Why are we so eager to be understood yet often reluctant to examine ourselves? And why, given the astonishing improbability of our existence, do we spend so much of our lives discussing things that hardly matter?

The peculiar business of being human is what I have decided is the best name for this conundrum I continue to inhabit. Fran finds the absurdity and makes it funny. I find the absurdity and want to pull up a chair.

Neither approach is inherently superior. Humor can reveal truths that earnest analysis obscures, just as curiosity can uncover complexities that a clever dismissal overlooks. And that, I think, is where critical thinking enters the conversation.

A sharp opinion is not necessarily a well-examined one. I can admire Fran’s certainty without mistaking it for truth. I can appreciate the brilliance of an observation while questioning its assumptions. I can laugh at her impatience with humanity while recognizing that it sometimes prevents us from understanding the very people we find so exasperating.

Her wit can be illuminating. It can also be reductive. My curiosity can be illuminating. It can also become an endless search for explanations where perhaps none are necessary. She may dismiss too quickly. I may examine too long. Somewhere between those tendencies lies a rather interesting place to think.

Lately, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to a couple of writers and thinkers who challenge my understanding of the world. Anne Carson is another recent fascination. Her writing resists easy categorization. She moves among poetry, scholarship, translation, and philosophical inquiry, often leaving the reader to discover meaning in the spaces between what is said and what is deliberately left unresolved.

Where Lebowitz can make an observation feel like a final verdict, Carson often leaves a thought beautifully unfinished. And then there’s Marcus Aurelius, writing private reflections on discipline, mortality, and the management of his own mind while governing an empire. His concern wasn’t necessarily what other people were doing wrong, but how he might respond more wisely to the world around him.

Three remarkably different intellectual temperaments.

Lebowitz observes the world and finds it ridiculous. Carson examines the world and finds it mysterious. Aurelius confronts the world and asks how he ought to conduct himself within it. I value all three, not because I want to adopt their conclusions, but because I want to borrow their lenses. That’s what I increasingly appreciate about reading. I’m not searching for people who confirm what I already believe. I’m searching for people who interrupt it.

People who make me think differently. People who challenge my assumptions, complicate my convictions, or offer a perspective I hadn’t considered.

I don’t need to agree with someone to find them intellectually enriching. In fact, disagreement can often spark a far more interesting conversation than consensus, unless you have my friend Jenine sitting next to you. Her thinking doesn’t move, oh well.

Perhaps this is why I find superficial exchanges increasingly unsatisfying. So much remains to be explored about what it means to be alive, yet we often stay comfortably preoccupied with logistics, routines, and the endless management of ordinary life.

Of course, ordinary existence requires management. Someone has to remember the dinner reservation, but surely, between the reservation and dessert, we can occasionally contemplate the absurdity of consciousness.

That brings me back to my inner Fran.

I suspect many women reach a point in life when they become less interested in performing agreeableness. Not less kind, necessarily, but less willing to hide an opinion simply to preserve the appearance of harmony. I have finally embraced and educated myself over the years about the difference between diplomacy and self-erasure.

And perhaps age, experience, and a growing awareness of life’s finitude (a new word for me!) make that distinction increasingly hard to ignore.

Still, I recognize that my inner Fran can be a bit raw and rowdy.  I like her.

She sometimes wants to interrupt an exceptionally tedious conversation with an observation that, while potentially accurate, would do nothing to improve the social atmosphere. My inner Fran has endless opinions on performative behavior, intellectual laziness, and the extraordinary energy people devote to appearing interesting rather than becoming interested. I surely cannot tell them they are dull and boring. Can I? I know what Fran would say!

She would occasionally skip the pleasantries and get straight to the point. Fortunately, the more diplomatic part of me usually intervenes.

Well, usually.

Intellectual freedom does not require abandoning emotional intelligence. Having something clever to say doesn’t always mean it needs to be said. A person can be wrong without being foolish, quiet without being shallow, and uninterested in my favorite questions without lacking an interior life. Life and experience have afforded me that important distinction.

I don’t want my admiration for intellectual sharpness to become an excuse for arrogance. Nor do I want my desire for deeper conversation to become a judgment of people who experience life differently and have no interest in “going deep.” Recognizing those distinctions may be just as important as making a brilliant observation.

Perhaps maturity isn’t about learning to silence your inner Fran. It’s about knowing when to hand her the microphone. Sometimes her irreverence is exactly what’s needed, whether an absurdity deserves to be named, conventional wisdom warrants a challenge, or everyone in the room seems determined to agree with something no one has questioned. And sometimes curiosity, patience, and restraint accomplish far more than the sharpest remark.

I want access to both.

The courage to say what I think and the humility to recognize that it may be incomplete. The freedom to be irreverent and the discipline to stay thoughtful. The capacity to laugh at humanity without losing my fascination with it.

After all, I’m not particularly interested in becoming Fran Lebowitz. She seems to have that role well occupied, but I want to give my inner Fran a little more room to roam.

I doubt I’ll ever arrive at a final understanding of what it means to be human. Frankly, I hope I don’t. Where would the fun be in that? In the meantime, my inner Fran is welcome to come out and play, but I reserve the right to send her home before dessert unless it’s Susie Cakes.