Still Searching

On curiosity, frustration, and the things we love

Last weekend I took the Eurostar to London to see the new Marilyn Monroe exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It had been popping up on social the past few months, and despite feeling under the weather, I was determined to go.

Part of the draw was Marilyn herself, of course, but part of it was that I'd recently been gifted Marilyn and Her Books, which offers a fascinating glimpse into a side of her that often gets overshadowed.

Side note: here’s a wonderful piece by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times.

What stayed with me from both the book and the exhibition wasn’t the glamour or even the tragedy. It was her curiosity. She read constantly. She underlined passages. She studied psychology, poetry, literature, and philosophy. She seemed deeply engaged in the process of trying to understand herself and the world around her.

As I wandered through the galleries, I found myself thinking about that word: curiosity.

I'm writing this from Paris, where I've been for a little over a week. After dreaming about spending extended time here for years, it feels both exactly as I imagined and nothing like I imagined at all.

There are moments when I walk through the city and feel almost giddy that I'm actually here. Then there are moments when I'm standing in Monoprix staring at a label I can't decipher, searching for a word I know I've learned but can't quite retrieve, or sitting at a café with my notebook open, wondering why a project I've worked on for years still feels unfinished.

Over the past few months, I've been struck by how many of the things I love are currently frustrating me.

French is one of them, though perhaps that’s not surprising. Learning a language is humbling on the best of days.

Ballet is another. After years of classes, private lessons, performances, and practice, I still encounter regular reminders of what I can’t do. Lately it’s been sous-sus. Not en pointe. Not some advanced combination. A basic sous-sus in ballet slippers!

Writing belongs on the list, too. The memoir continues to unfold in its own time rather than mine, which is not a timeline I appreciate.

Even reading feels different these days. I’ve always been someone who buys more books than she can possibly read. Recently, I’ve found myself picking them up and setting them down again. Nothing seems to hold my attention in quite the same way.

For a while, I wondered if I was losing interest in things that had once brought me joy.

The thought caught me off guard. Ballet has been part of my life for years. Writing even longer (Hip Tranquil Chick turns 20 this year!). French has occupied countless mornings, lessons, notebooks, and Duolingo streaks. The idea that I might be drifting away from these pursuits felt unsettling, as though I were losing touch with parts of myself.

But the more I sat with it, the more I realized the frustration wasn't coming from a lack of interest. It was coming from the fact that I cared so much.

If I didn’t care about French, I wouldn’t mind struggling through conversations.

If I didn’t care about ballet, I wouldn’t notice what wasn’t improving.

If I didn’t care about writing, I wouldn’t feel impatient with the pace of the book.

What I was experiencing wasn’t indifference. It was longing. I want more fluency, more progress, more ease, more evidence that all the years I’ve devoted to these pursuits are leading somewhere.

Perhaps that’s why Marilyn’s curiosity struck me so deeply. Reading about her, I wasn’t encountering someone who had arrived. I was encountering someone who continued searching. Despite all her success, she remained a student. She kept reading, questioning, exploring, and reaching toward something she hadn’t yet become.

The older I get, the less convinced I am that life is about arriving anywhere. Every time I feel confident in one area, another reminds me how much I still have to learn.

Eleven days into this Paris adventure, I certainly don’t have any grand conclusions. What I do know is that the things frustrating me most right now are also the things I care about most deeply.

As I walked back to the train station after the exhibition, I found myself thinking about Marilyn’s books. Not the famous photographs or the iconic white dress, but the underlined passages and dog-eared pages. The evidence of someone still learning, still searching, still becoming.

I started thinking about how easy it is to romanticize the finished product. The fluent speaker. The accomplished dancer. The published author. The person who appears to have it all figured out.

What we rarely see are the years spent in conversation with a dream. The countless ordinary days of showing up, trying again, getting discouraged, learning something new, and continuing anyway.

Tomorrow I'll return to my French lesson. I'll keep working on the memoir. I'll head to ballet class in French on Friday. Not because I've mastered any of them, but because, despite the frustration, I'm still curious about what happens next.

PS For those who like to linger, I’m sharing the fuller arc of this chapter in the private collection. You can join us here.

Resources

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About Me

Hi, I’m Kimberly! Psychotherapist, author of multiple lifestyle books, and host of the Tranquility Coterie and Salons. I’m smitten with my 50s, ballet classes, handwritten snail mail, matcha lattes, rescued pugs and pigs, and anything Parisian. Find me at kimberlywilson.com and @tranquilitydujour.