Fleabag was one of the shows I first watched by myself. That means on my own, because I used to share the thing of watching series with my partner. This time it was 2016 and I was on my own, in another country, living my new student life.
I thought the story was finished. But this summer, to my surprise, the second and final season was released. And this is why Fleabag holds special nostalgic value for me, it has accompanied me during moments I felt on my own like never before, like the protagonist.

For those who don’t know the series, let me tell you upfront that I am bad at descriptions, I knew there was something refreshing in that show that I could not put it in words. The story, the characters. They were transparent and hyperbolic. As a person who write stories, I felt captivated. Ok, all of this sounds super abstract, let my try again to give a synthesis of the show and get to the point. In season 1 we get to know Fleabag, that is the protagonist, a brutally honest woman with awesome hair and style, near their 30s (my assumption), living in overpriced London, with autosabotage tendencies, narcissism, who makes clever jokes, who is super sexual, selfish and egoist. I don’t really know the difference between those last two words. In real life people would refer to her as a mean person, I would probably fall in love with her.

Hello, I am sam’s fictional crush, nice to meet you

I just found the description on wikipedia about the show: “Fleabag is a British comedy-drama television show created and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also stars in the title role. Based on Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show first in London”.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is my most recent source of inspiration. Yesterday M. and I were talking about admiring people. It made me think that I don’t get to admire many people since Armando, my philosophy professor, told us the story of when he met a person he admired. That occasion he froze and could not even say a word to that person, he told us. Then I experienced a similar situation myself. I got to meet someone who I really liked her writing style and ideas. I was nervous about what to say. I knew everything about her work, but still, I didn’t know her, and that was different. So much pressure to impress or say something clever. Fuck that. Then I learned that the people you find interesting or whatever are also people, which creates some sort of common ground. We get to experience shit, deal with inspiration blocks, bureaucracy, climate crisis. We are all in the same together. But somehow we see in others something different, worth of admiration or inspiration. But why does it matter to distinguish these words?

“Admiration is a social emotion elicited by people of competence, talent, or skill exceeding standards. Admiration facilitates social learning in groups. Admiration motivates self-improvement through learning from role-models” (Source: wikipedia).

“Inspiration is an unconscious burst of creativity in a literary, musical, or other artistic endeavour”. (Souce: Also wikipedia)

My conflict with admiration is that by definition it involves some sort of hierarchy. There is a person who is admired and a person who admires. My inner anarchist doesn’t like this aspect. That is why perhaps to make me feel more “equal” I like to think of people as inspiring. One doesn’t need to feel inspired by everyone. There is work and people that resonate with you, and there are many other things and people that just don’t, and that is ok. Which is also liberating for my own work and thoughts: there are people that might find my ideas relevant or inspiring, and to others they just don’t click. What we do is not for everyone. The best one can do is just continuing doing their own thing, weather people find it admirable or inspiring.

Perhaps those are some of the interesting questions to ask, why is society organized in a such a way that specific competences and skills are valued? I am sure there are people also doing activities that might seem “not extraordinary”, but who gets to decide what is “more admirable”? I just recognized again how every person is different (no shit Sherlock!), we deal with the world differently, some have the time and energy to initiate projects, do creative work, and inspire others. Some don’t, because again, different experiences, privileges, and priorities.

I hope I don’t forget this. Keep doing your thing, be honest in what you do, it is not up to you to decide if you become a source of admiration or inspiration for someone else, but do question why do you find inspiring the things you find inspiring.

For example, this scene in Fleabag. There is a lot going on in the dynamics, and those subtle details are what I find refreshing. But I will discuss more about what I have taken from the show and Phoebe’s work in another post.