I Am Me

Tuesday, February 21

Excerpt from "An Odd Break with the Human Heart," by Elizabeth Mitchell

Now that we've broken the barriers that once kept us out of law schools and board rooms, we have unearthed another, more hidden source of many of our limitations: the human heart. Suddenly, we see a deeper and more beguiling force at work in constructing a self for ourselves. These are the commitments ot our loved ones and friends, and their dreams for us of a self that fits into their lives neatly and cozily, like a puzzle piece. These are the wishes of a parent or the sway of feminism on our career choices.

To overcome these forces, and to look at our lives autonomously, we need to shrug off what we women have been trained to care about above all else: other peopl, their thoughts, feelings, and concerns. We need to put the training we received when we cared for dolls into perspective. Or we will be compelled to experience only shadow lives.

This is not to say that everyone I know is held back by ties to their community. Many women I know have identified their own ambitions and-more importantly-their own desires, and have dared to be self-interested. But many others have not. None of us would question our abilities to do a job as well as a man, but too often we don't risk leaving our ministering roles to pursue our own vision. While we are able to focus on what we know would make us feel satisfied, we remain addicted to institutions-to schools, to workplaces, and to other symbols of accomplishment. The rules of our lives have been changed by the women's movement, but for many women, these rules have brought with them a new set of limits, not a new sense of freedom.

My mother keeps me on a long leash. I move away from home, traveling farther, earning more, putting off motherhood. She's very proud. Then I hear the soft swish of the chain in the dust. I am not exactly towed back in, but held at the run of my tether. I hear she's been asking my brothers, "Has she talked of children yet?"

In our society, babies have come to represent everything but unmaturated human beings. They function as the nexus for debate and discussion in a world changed by feminism. Few people expect women's love relationships to resemble those of our grandmothers or our mothers, but most still wonder how anyone could reject children. Babies were a safety net. If everything goes wrong in this wild new world of female emancipation, at least I can say that I bore children. For some, it is the doll that I need to qualify as a real girl.

But I don't want all the hope of life to reside in the beginning of a new human being. I want that anticipation to reside in an unborn part of myself, whether it be intellectual, spiritual, or emotional. I want to push myself toward this self-realization.

I suspect the true goal would be the perpetual pursuit of joy. In seeking joy, the agonies would not disappear - perhaps, in fact, happiness would rarely materialize - but the human gesture would be toward toward delight, and that pursuit must begin with the individual. Groups or movements can bring equality. Only individuals can achieve ecstasy.

Despite the fact that there are many influences from my community I have put off, part of what I am taking on in at least temporarily rejecting the demands of my family, my friends, my gender, is an option my mother-who loves to travel but rarely does, who adores journalism but gave it up for marriage and children-has always wanted me to have: the exquisite agony of being an individual and the awful luxury of feeling unsettled.




Damn. This is something I have totally identified with in the recent past: the rejection of children, the perpetual pursuit of joy, the exquisite agony of being an individual and the awful luxury of feeling unsettled.

Kim 8:43 AM |