If you were here, we'd listen to the Killers. We'd be laying around the apartment enjoying the air conditioning because it's hot and wet outside. And loud. Cicadas are everywhere.

The summer after I graduated from BYU, I spent a lot of time laying around my parents' back yard, reading by the pool. I resurrected my library card from a desk drawer and checked out mounds of books from the local library, and one of those was Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion.Mostly it was interesting in the same way that looking through a box of old photos is interesting; I'm sure the essays were extremely topical at the time, but fifty years on they don't connect much.

Except one. I remember at BYU saying at one point that I couldn't respect anyone because no one could see what a fraud I was, which was a natural extension of thinking that I was a fraud yet not getting called out on it. So when I read this selection from Didion's essay "On Self-Respect" that first summer and again yesterday, it resonated:

The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through ones' marked cards the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the kindness done for the wrong reason, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough.

And I suppose that when I was younger and maybe even today I looked for self respect in the approval of others. Because when you're young and you grow up in an environment of people you trust and respect, you expect others' judgment to reflect reality. But people are deceived easily enough. I feel like Didion is tapping into and articulating something that I thought was just mine, like how I used to think I was the only guy into guys.

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The Killers, man. That's good stuff.

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Well, she goes on. "Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs."

Maybe most people don't need to read that, but for me the connection wasn't clear before. We all have responsibility for our own lives, but we don't have to accept that, much in the way we don't have to accept that our credit card balances gather interest. Reality goes on whether we accept it or not, but not accepting it sure can make things harder for us.

I feel like I have more character now than I did at university. Taking responsibility for my own life meant doing what seemed best to me, which is easier living on my own and away from BYU, being financially independent of my parents. I still do dumb things and sometimes I still try to duck the consequences, but less, Cause-and-effect doesn't mystify me like it used to.

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You'd have probably fallen asleep by now, if you were here. But it's good for me to articulate these things.