This deceptively simple line packed an enormous amount of wisdom into a single image. Karr told the graduates that the most privileged person in the room 'suffers the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.' Everyone's loved ones have been hurt, everyone has suffered agonizing disappointments, and even the best families fail to show up at the key moment. The image of 'twisted up insides' versus 'blow-dried outsides' captured perfectly the social media age's central delusion: that everyone else has it figured out while you're falling apart. Karr was speaking from experience — she had spent decades hiding her own chaos behind academic credentials and literary success, and she wanted the graduates to know that the polished exterior everyone else presents is exactly that — an exterior.