Had a conversation with a friend today that made me think, it's ok not to live every day like you're out to change the world. That's too ambitious.
Live your life in a way that is bigger than yourself.
And be grateful. Always be grateful. The power went out for a few minutes in my neighborhood earlier, and the minor inconvenience had me thinking about how terribly intolerable the entire situation was becoming as more time passed.
I was talking with my Dad today and he nonchalantly mentioned that he was taking my mom to the doctor on Thursday. I remembered she had visited the doctor earlier this month...
Me: Why is Mom going to the doctor?
Dad: *Long pause* [My dad never pauses when talking] Well, your mom told me not to tell you, but she's going to have surgery to get a growth removed.
Me: WHAT
Dad: The doctor said it's benign but they want to take preventative measures so that it doesn't become something more.
So there it is. Moms don a cape and become superheroes. My mom didn't want us to know this was going on because she didn't want me and my sister to be worried. The selflessness of it makes me want to cry. Even as grown adults we are continually shielded with love and giving. I also thought about my coworker, who relentlessly is helping her son with ADHD plan his next steps for college, even as he lashes out at her with frustration. The giving - it's unconditional and pure and the most infinite there is.
If I could wrap my mom up and protect her with an unbreakable shield so that nothing could ever harm her, it might start to resemble the cocoon of love she's built for us.
This Linkedin post by entrepreneur Inge Geerdens really irked me when I read it the other day. Basically she expresses a mild level of exasperation in having to field questions from people about balancing her work and home life that her male counterparts don't have to deal with. As she states,
"Being a female entrepreneur has its upsides, but also its disadvantages. Like
having to find an answer to the question I - contrary to my male colleagues ? -
get asked a lot. “As a mother of three children, how do you balance your work
and your private life?”"
Um, hello, Ms Geerdens? In case you didn't notice, this is a very real issue that characterizes the very being of working mothers. People wouldn't be asking these questions and highlighting this imbalance if it didn't exist. She goes on to reveal the true reason that having to balance work and home life has never been an issue for her:
"At some point in our life my husband and I had the feeling we weren’t around
enough for our children and we had to make a choice. And we did: we decided I
would expand my business, while my husband became a stay-at-home dad helping me
as well, but mainly during school hours...My husband and I make a great team. We found a way to
live the life we love, without feeling guilty. So the answer is: I never have to
think about a balance. I work with the people I like, I live with the people I
love and I love the job I do."
Is this a footnote? An asterisk? No, it defines - and is the sole and key reason - her situation and experience are unlike that of other ambitious, family-loving women. And she inserted it in there breezily, giving it a lot less credit than it deserved for why she was able to have the "great life" any right-minded, hard-working woman would want. Her post would have been tons more helpful if she described how she was able to snag a man like that. Sadly her experience reinforced the fact that to make it to the upper echelons of the corporate world, there have to be career sacrifices made by one party of the relationship if children are in the picture. More often than not, that ends up being the mother.
Unfortunately Ms Geerdens, you are the exception, and not the rule.
I feel like I've spent a good part of this weekend meeting new people and talking about myself. Talking about yourself consecutively about the superficial, factual aspects of your life kind of makes you feel like a broken record after a while. I live in South San Francisco, I moved to the Bay area for work, I'm originally from LA, I work in IT, I live with my sister, etc etc.
Through this exercise, I realized I'm kind of boring. I haven't been to many far-flung exotic places, I haven't gotten a PhD in anything, I don't have an extreme hobby that would make people go ooh, nor do I have great/fun/exciting/interesting stories to tell about myself. After all the introduction hoopla, I find myself kind of just settling back and letting others take the driver's seat in terms of steering the conversation. I do discover that whenever I have a conversation with others who I've just met or don't know so well, I ask them a lot of questions. I think it's a way for me to discover facts and commonalities about the other person I can latch onto and keep the conversation going with, and then I find out a lot about them during the process.
So do people end up not really knowing me well? Is that possible, to "know" someone, after one conversation? I suppose I don't mind people not knowing much about me, but I like learning about others. In the delicate dance that we call conversation, I suppose I'm content with being led, as it's the best way to learn the dance quickly and be able to complement my partner's moves as we sashay back and forth.
