Issue #37: Toxic individualism – or the downside of getting your own way

Inspired by a dramatic incident at my yoga studio.

Earlier this week, I witnessed a showdown in the cafe area of my yoga studio. Let me set the scene. The centre itself, located in a leafy mews near the now-untrendy Camden Town station, is a natural spiritual meeting point for its clientele – Lululemon warriors, former Primrose Hill set socialites and hardcore yogis alike – to unite for a tranquil hour or two, often lingering in the lobby before or after class. I was writing on my laptop ahead of the lunchtime vinyasa session, seated at one of the two long communal tables (wifi password: n4maste). The right-side table – the one I wasn’t on – has a purple sign that reads: ‘Tech-free zone’. 

All of a sudden, breaking the zen-like silence, came a loud female voice from the tech-free table. ‘Excuse me,’ said the woman, her stainless steel cutlery poised like a pitchfork over her Tupperware of pasta salad. ‘You need to move. This is a tech-free table.’ There was a tense pause, until the red-faced man opposite her, who had been quietly tapping away at his phone, moved over to Table Left – with us shuffling down the bench to make room for him. All was well again in paradise. 

That is, until five minutes later, when a piercing ringtone sounded of the default variety 99.9% of iPhone users still use. The phone belonged to the other remaining person, another woman, on the tech-free table. ‘I’m so sorry!’ she cried out. ‘HRMPH!’, said Pasta Salad Lady. She picked up her Tupperware, abandoned fork still swaying accusatively inside it, and stormed off outside. 

The reason I recount this humdrum little anecdote is: I think it’s relatable. Like all the best stories, there’s no goodie or baddie – not really. We’ve all been these people. The ones yearning for our environment to be exactly the way we want it, and the ones accidentally or otherwise breaking the rules, bulldozing a sacred communal code just because we feel like it. Both behaviours were, in their own way, individualistic responses  – that is, prioritising one’s welfare and/or freedom as an individual over the comfort of others. And the fall-out left us all – onlookers included – feeling isolated from one another. 

The pitfalls of individualism

Getting your own way, it seems, has its limits. I say this as someone who’s taken individualism to its logical extreme. I am, as the kids on TikTok would put it, in my Villain Era. 

‘This era is about choosing yourself, setting boundaries, and really living your life rather than curating it. It's about swapping politeness for a spine, and people pleasing for independence.’ - Courtney Young, for Bustle

I’m at a time in my life where I am – and I say this in a literal rather than a moralistic sense – quite selfish. Living alone, I am the dictator-by-default of my home environment. I don’t travel during rush hour, or school holidays, because I don’t need to. My meal plans consist of whatever random thing occurs to me on the day – although I draw the line at the trending Girl Dinner. When boarding a plane, usually I’m one of those solo travellers sitting contentedly, AirPods in, in the departure lounge until the final moment when all the noisy families have boarded (was I a more tolerant person before I owned noise-cancelling earphones? Undoubtedly. But I made a deal with the Devil and, well, here we are). At the height of my villainy, I spent most of 2022 travelling, missing out on a handful of friends’ and family members’ milestones, returning an obnoxious shade of oat latte brown the week before Christmas. 

Since returning from Lisbon two months ago, I’ve toned it down, becoming somewhat less of a villain. Community, of the ilk that my yoga studio provides, is something I take seriously. As is showing up, when I can, for friends’ important moments (which is why this month’s schedule consists of a Chinese short film festival, an AI-generated improvisational comedy night, a live recording of a Sex Talks podcast and a supper club in the depths of east London). As is supporting local shops & cafes and getting to know the people who work there; taking the time to chat to my neighbours; pushing myself to be a more thoughtful gift giver; and nurturing close friendships & family ties. This year is less about me. The roots I wrote about wanting to tend to, on my return from Lisbon, have been watered. I’ve planted new seeds – friendships, routines, rituals – and I’m watching them sprout. I’m in no hurry to rush off anywhere; I feel grounded.

I know these are baby steps, and not entirely altruistic (as it turns out, when you make the effort to learn baristas’ names, you get a lot of free cake). But it has made me feel connected in a way I’ve been yearning for for quite some time, ever since the pandemic tore through the social fabric of our lives. Still, I remain protective of my current lifestyle, which is quiet, calm and unencumbered. But does holding on to this make me happier? Only when I acknowledge it as what it is: the cherry on top of this particular stage of my life, rather than the way things have to be, forever; my happiness conditional on my Kingdom of One. 

Compromising for community

‘Hell is other people,’ wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. ‘Yes, but so is a lack of them,’ added sociologist Eric Klinenberg on an early episode of the Alonement podcast. It’s that paradox that’s at the heart of, say, a dramatic showdown in a yoga studio over a tech-free zone. Inviting others into your life, whether it’s through sharing a public space or raising a drooling newborn, will always involve some degree of chaos. 

Religion is rife with compromise – or, perhaps better put, prioritising community values over your own needs. Charitable giving, communal worship, ceremonies around everything from birth to death. Following certain dietary rules, in the name of shared belief. The older I get, the more I appreciate religion as a blueprint for the communal values we all need to feel whole: rituals; shared activities; a concession to something greater (of course, religion is equally aligned with the values of solitude and reflection, but that’s for another newsletter). I’m not religious, even though sometimes I wish I could be. And yet, and yet – as a friend’s partner, a former youth pastor turned non-believer, once questioned (still searching for the answer himself):

‘Once you reject everything that your religious background tells you to do, what do you do instead?’

I don’t know. So I go to my yoga class, and I turn up on time, and I do what the teacher says. And then, at the end, I bow my head in unison with 16 other people, expressing gratitude for the practice. I wipe down my mat. And it feels good. As a secular person, yoga is not just exercise for me, but also a spiritual community. Classes are a place where I can feel both silent and accepted as part of a group. I see familiar faces and experience bonding moments, like the other week, on a torrentially-rainy day, when a woman offered to share her umbrella with me on the way to the tube station. 

Sure, there are things I’d change: a studio a little closer to my home, perhaps, or shorter classes at more convenient times. But I’d so much rather experience the warmth of my community than the soulless, on-demand, at-home workouts of the pandemic era. The inconvenience is a sacrifice worth making; a sacrifice which barely feels like a sacrifice at all. 

And I know I’m romanticising compromise here, but I think it’s something that feels far away, counter-intuitive even, in this era of divisive concepts like The Ick – a term for the sudden repulsion you might experience in the early stages of dating – the misuse of Therapy Speak like ‘boundaries’, or the prevalence of thought-stopping language like ‘toxic’, most commonly used as a distancing technique: toxic masculinity, friendships, people. Whereas, the best application of ‘toxic’ I’ve seen, actually, is paired with the word ‘individualism’ – I first heard this combination of terms used by activist Mia Birdsong, on the podcast Hurry Slowly. When the desire for individual comfort – an understandable one – becomes a force not only for community division, but for a contagious kind of isolation. 

And although the term ‘toxic individualism’ is most often used in political discourse – a scaremongering term about the plight of Americans – it’s just as apt to describe an individual, everyday experience where the energy expended in trying to make everything perfect for yourself, at the expense of others, is actually to your detriment. It’s a hollow feeling, and one entirely distinct from the guilt-free bliss of intentional solitude, that doesn’t come at a cost to others.

As for balancing individualism – the non-toxic kind – with interpersonal compromise? There is no perfect, I think. Sometimes peace comes from getting to do whatever the hell you want; sometimes peace comes from hearing someone breathing beside you in bed at 11pm and thinking, OK, their body is a little too hot, and they could probably invest in some Sudafed, but my God I’m lucky to sleep next to them every night. Or the power of knowing you have a physical space to go to, where you can feel accepted, even if that means respecting a tech-free rule, or else accepting that even the best-intentioned rules are sometimes broken in the name of community.

Some further reading/links/resources on this topic, for the curious-minded.