When I was pregnant, I read Louise Erdrich’s The Blue Jays Dance. It was an OK book. But it made me realize that I am not the woman I thought I would be.
I had visions of becoming Louise Erdrich – an herbal-tea-drinking jogger with a home in the country, a vegetable garden and a sensitive musician husband with gorgeous hair.
Instead, I live in the city, work in a cube, drink coffee every morning, and my husband watches a LOT of television. We never play cards in the evening. We never sit around listening to music.
I recognize and, on the surface, envy the beauty of Louise Erdrich’s life. Her life is something out of a picture book, a hand-hewn scrapbook decorated with pressed leaves and photos of sunrises. But it is not my life. And my life, while more commercialized and less picturesque, is just as beautiful.
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Don't you hate that, when you find someone in a book or movie (or, God forbid, real life) that makes you think, "Oh yeah, that was what _I_ wanted to be like when I grew up!" Expectations are a funny thing. To think that we spend so much time at 16, 18, heck, even 25 planning what our lives will be like when we're 28, 30, 35...and we have absolutely no idea what might be lying right around the corner to either bless us or blindside us. And then when they don't happen we get all bent out of shape. Hm. I think this is a good topic for my blog...
Holy cats, you have a headshot! I want a headshot!
You know, I've been thinking about this for a while... we live in such a culture of instant gratification. Email, drive-thru coffee, TiVo... whatever we could possibly want or need, we can get our hands on instantaneously. And I think we let that carry over into things we have *no* control over. And when life throws us a curve, we are totally unequipped to just deal with it. We have this bizarre sense of entitlement -- all those commercials tell us "you're worth it" and "don't you deserve xyz?" And it seems that the most important tenet of early-childhood education these days is "building kids' self-esteem..." where does that come from? I mean, self-esteem is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't mean that you are ENTITLED to all the best life has to offer. Stumbling blocks build character.
Ah, well, it's Monday morning, just take that FWIW.
Oh my heavens, we are so on the same page. I totally agree 100%. That was one of the things that drove me nuts in teaching, this whole padding everything for kids and ALL the kids that try out for something get put on the team because how could you possibly fracture their poor fragile self-esteem by cutting them...GOOD LORD, GET A GRIP! I got cut from things, I got big fata red F's on my papers, and I'm not a shivering ball of worthlessness. Now, I don't believe in being cruel, either, so I didn't put nasty comments on my kids' papers and circle the F three times (or even write it in red, frankly), but I'm sorry, if you failed the test you don't deserve to think you did okay (unless of course you're one of those super-struggling kids, which is a whole different issue).
When did kids suddenly become so delicate? Maybe this is just a California thing, but kids here don't get to go off on their bikes for hours at a time, or get to run around the neighborhood after sunset, and those are some of my best memories: riding my bike into downtown Arlington BY MYSELF, going to the library BY MYSELF, playing outside BY MYSELF. I mean, there were kidnappers and evil people back then, but we didn't live in fear of being hauled off in a nondescript sedan. And granted, the streets were smaller and a LOT less crowded than they are out here; heck, the main streets through town have speed limits of 50! So yes, it's a different environment, but still, our kids will have no sense of independence, no sense of self-reliance, if they aren't allowed to take care of themselves.
And if parents are worried about their kids' self-esteem shriveling away to nothing when they get turned down for something, then a lot of the fault lies with the parents. They're not instilling in their children the fact that they are inherently valuable simply because they are alive, because they were made in the image of a Holy God that loves them so much he allowed his own Son to be killed for them. If you're telling your kid that you love them for who they are and not what they do, then when they screw up and fail, or just don't make the team, they'll be bummed, yes, which is not a bad thing, but they'll be able to fall back on the fact that it doesn't mean they're worthless. And if you help your kid develop the talents and gifts they were born with, you're going to add to their self-esteem even more, so that, when they don't make the softball team, they can dry their tears and go write a story about it, or a song about it, or a play about it, or paint a picture about it, or forget about it altogether and go mix a new potion with their chemistry set in the basement.
Jeez, am I even on the same topic you started on? How the heck did I get on this soapbox?!
And yes, I do have a headshot! :) I have about 400 of them, actually. And that's not an exaggeration. :) The photographer from my wedding did headshots for my books and website FOR FREE in exchange for photo credit. If you go to cordlesshead.com/alison you'll see another one. Even after weeding out all the ones that were practically exact copies, and all the ones where my shirt was wrinkled or something, I still have about 200 pictures. I yi yi!
Oh, one last thing on instant gratification: I've stopped using the microwave. I've turned into a somewhat-health-nut thanks to mercola.com and all the help my mom has gotten from his clinic in Chicago, and one of the things his research shows is that microwaving food actually alters the molecular structure of it, making it more likely to cause cancer. (I made a lot of other changes, too, but that's a story for another post.) But man, it is so weird to have to WAIT for my food, because you're right, we don't have to wait for anything anymore. Want to make hamburgers tonight? Better take the meat out to start thawing when you get breakfast! Want to reheat that pizza? Crank up the toaster oven! Patience is turning into a lost virtue, and I'm the worst of them; you should see me drive if I think I can shave off even one lousy minute from my trip! But I'm really trying to slow myself down. Saving 56.4 seconds as I come home from the grocery store isn't going to enrich my life, quite frankly--especially since I'm just going to waste it playing Burning Monkey Mahjong later on tonight.
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