So the other day, I was hiking up the mountain with my friend Lotta, who told me a story about her grandmother. I will probably get the details wrong, but the gist is this:
Her grandmother, one of several siblings, grew up in a small seaboard town in Sweden, where as a young girl she was known for her beauty and as an adult, as the wife of a prominent shipbuilder (this is where I am sketchy on the details). When she was in her forties, her husband died, and with it, her identity: No longer the young beauty, no longer the prominent wife. The story was a clear reminder that until fairly recent history, women derived their identity from their looks or their husband, or both.
Stay with me here: Flash forward a few generations and suddenly women could be the shipbuilders — or whatever. And so we began to derive our identity from what we did, our work. Slowly we are learning, though, that that’s not right either.
I was haunted by all this, as well as Shannon’s post on Midlife Crisis, when I started wondering if, just maybe, the issue is this: Somewhere between the era of being someone’s wife or daughter – or, more recently, someone’s doctor or someone’s lawyer — somewhere between those two poles, we women are still trying mightily to figure out how to define our authentic Self. And in the process of the search, many of us get trapped by the icon: We dream of who we want to be – the swashbuckling reporter, the fearless photog, the edgy writer, the rail-thin supermodel, the uber-wealthy CEO– and make life choices that fit the image, images that are often dictated by women’s media – magazines, movies, fiction — that tend to glorify the impossible.
And if those dreams don’t pan out, or we decide to stop the chase, if the iconic self becomes a nagging reminder of the road not taken, well, we look over our shoulders. Second guess all our choices. Feel we’ve failed. When of course, we have not.
Could fear of betraying the icon be one reason why making life choices is so fraught? Why we assign our decisions so much weight? Why, no matter what we choose, we taunt ourselves with the idea that Door Number two would surely have been a better choice?
When it comes to Gen X-ers and Millenials, I tend to blame us: mothers who, infatuated by the prospect of our daughter’s newfound opportunity, taught them they could do and be anything. There’s possibility out there, we exclaimed. All those open doors! Opportunity! Grab it! All you have to do is want it — and try hard!
We were right to tell our daughters to dream high, and never sell themselves short. But what we left out of the lesson was the fact that sometimes reality – or talent or resources or life itself – intervenes, now matter how hard you try or how hard you want. (Could this be why so many college women consider a “B+” to be a failure?) And you know what? When it does, it doesn’t always matter. Because what we do is not who we are. And sometimes the image — the iconic self — is just that. Men have had generations to figure this out. But for women, relatively new to this game of self-definition, we’re stuck. Call it growing pains.
Meanwhile, full disclosure: When I was a kid, my two dreams were to have a houseful of children and to write the great American novel. Marrying into a family of seven siblings quickly taught me the insanity of my first dream. (My mother-in-law once confided that over a ten year stretch, she had no memory of anything but laundry and carpools. True story.) And my second? At this point, I’d be happy with the adequate American novel.
As for my authentic self? Still not sure. Are you?
You have the details down, except for that you promoted grandpa. He was a sea captain – there was no wealth but they had a comfortable life and prominence in the small town.
And I think you are right. I remember when my nephews were young my sister in law told me she was really careful about telling them they were “good” when they had done something good. She said that you have to tell them that their drawing is good, or whatever, so they don;t think it’s THEIR value that gets determined by what they achieve. I was super impressed by that. And, thinking back, I assume the reason I was impressed was that the idea was new to me. Myself I was likely taught that my value was in the drawing, so to speak.
I really appreciate this post. I’ve definitely thought about these things, especially in the three years since graduating from SCU as I made a major career switch. I came to realize the unrealisticness of some of the aspirations I had — whether they were dreams I had since I was young or newly set outlandish goals. Also there were some aspirations that I thought, oh that would be great, but I’m really not willing to do what it takes to get there. It’s not what I wanted to do after all.
I couldn’t find the words for how I was feeling as I was struggling with all this, and I definitely don’t think that I’m in tune with my authentic self…but I hope that I can say that I’m on the way 🙂
All of it’s right. Every bit you say. We are drawn to an ideal and then we try to fit ourselves to the notion. My dream: to be an actress and writer. Years later, after having done both in a really small way, marriage and children came along. One reason I got divorced was that I didn’t fit in with his family’s ideal of what a ‘wife’ should be. It may have been my love of baseball combined with my male gay friends that made them uncomfortable. So I left and moved with my kids to a small western town. Where my kids grew up to be those kind you mention. Anything is possible. Their reality is lack of money from the home front and all fringe dwellers will understand this. Grinding poverty is the ultimate reality. In the meantime. I write for a living and act, occasionally even being paid to do it. But yet, it nags because that’s what people do…second guess and nag themselves over the road not taken, the poor judgment calls, the missed opportunities. Who would I have been….could I have been if only….
Love this post! I wonder if some of our frustration is about the fact that it’s virtually impossible to excel at everything–wife, writer, teacher, runner in my case–and so we’re always worried about the area in which we’re not measuring up to our own expectations?
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