to work or not
Madmomma has another wonderful post on working or not working. I like the words of Anna Quindlen, about living instead of just existing.
This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.
'I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm this afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.
All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.
It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived'.
So says the mad momma at 4:14 PM 7 have something to add Links to this post
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The indecisive Libran
I've been taking a short two week yoga course. Yeah, full of surprises, that's me. So I shoot out for an hour or two everyday while the Brat is at school and try to get some life back into this battered old body. So with all my falling ill recently the family badgered me into taking this yoga course. What has that got to do with anything? You'll see at the end of the post.
This post has been in the making a long while and I don't know what to do. My thoughts are scattered and I have not come to any conclusion so if that bothers you, please bugger off. Don't leave rude remarks to that effect. Actually, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say it. Here's the thing. For the last month or two my parents and the OA have been on my case to go back to work full time. You're wasting your brains and we miss seeing you on tv and reading as much of your byline as we used to, they say. Sigh. There it is. Out in the open.
I come from a family of working women. My grandmother was one of the first few Indian women to even apply for the Indian Civil Services in those days, let alone qualify. My grand aunt worked with Elizabeth Arden and then Shahnaz Husain and was the beauty consultant for most international airlines in those days. Her son went to boarding school in England way back then and she was always travelling for her job, a big deal in those days. Second grand aunt was the Director of Education for Schools or some such post that existed in those days. Again, a traveller who left her three kids with my great grandmother often. And the last was the Principal of a college.
My mother too, has been working forever. In fact when she and dad come to visit, my guest room is a maze of wires with their two laptops and three cell phones on charge. They don't take a break. Perhaps I am some sort of aberration, a sort of reaction to all the working women in my family. A desire to have a more structured and ordered life as opposed to the cheerful chaos I grew up amidst. A desire for a more ‘motherly’ mother than the ones I grew up around. Regressive, I know, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
The truth is that when I got pregnant I had every intention of going back to work within three months and then one thing lead to another and I ended up getting hooked on the Brat and refusing to look a full time job in the eye. My logic being that I couldn't possibly go to work and quit to have my second one in a few months. And then the Bean happened and is slowly getting weaned now and the pressure from family is back. Go back to work is the message and they aren't very subtle about it. Even my brother subtly says stuff that indicates that he'd like to see me back in office soon. The OA would like me to go back to work but doesn't want to influence me either way because he knows that if it doesn't work out, he'll never hear the end of it.
Now the suggestion is that I leave the Brat after school in daycare for about three hours more. That is it. Not much. Just about three hours more. Here are the reasons why. The Brat enjoys school, hates leaving while the daycare kids keep playing and cries on the way home to go back to his friends and the tricycles. So that of course makes him the easiest candidate for daycare. At least for a few hours, says the OA and the rest of the family. I am always crying about how this house has no outdoor area and how I want the Brat to enjoy cycling around in a garden and playing in a sand pit. Well the school has a daycare which is clean and well cared for and the kids are happy no matter what time I go. So I can no longer use that excuse!
He also eats the meal given in school with much less fuss. A lot more nutritious stuff goes down his throat than I can manage at home. The teacher praises my fussy eater and calls him one of the best. So it seems a healthier option if I don't allow my ego to get in the way and refuse to accept that someone else can feed my child better. I want to do what is best for him. And at this point logically the two or three extra hours per day at the daycare seems to be the best for the Brat. It gives him more company and the open space I crave for him.
This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD.
'I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other things were not true.
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm this afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.
All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.
It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived'.
So says the mad momma at 4:14 PM 7 have something to add Links to this post
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The indecisive Libran
I've been taking a short two week yoga course. Yeah, full of surprises, that's me. So I shoot out for an hour or two everyday while the Brat is at school and try to get some life back into this battered old body. So with all my falling ill recently the family badgered me into taking this yoga course. What has that got to do with anything? You'll see at the end of the post.
This post has been in the making a long while and I don't know what to do. My thoughts are scattered and I have not come to any conclusion so if that bothers you, please bugger off. Don't leave rude remarks to that effect. Actually, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say it. Here's the thing. For the last month or two my parents and the OA have been on my case to go back to work full time. You're wasting your brains and we miss seeing you on tv and reading as much of your byline as we used to, they say. Sigh. There it is. Out in the open.
I come from a family of working women. My grandmother was one of the first few Indian women to even apply for the Indian Civil Services in those days, let alone qualify. My grand aunt worked with Elizabeth Arden and then Shahnaz Husain and was the beauty consultant for most international airlines in those days. Her son went to boarding school in England way back then and she was always travelling for her job, a big deal in those days. Second grand aunt was the Director of Education for Schools or some such post that existed in those days. Again, a traveller who left her three kids with my great grandmother often. And the last was the Principal of a college.
My mother too, has been working forever. In fact when she and dad come to visit, my guest room is a maze of wires with their two laptops and three cell phones on charge. They don't take a break. Perhaps I am some sort of aberration, a sort of reaction to all the working women in my family. A desire to have a more structured and ordered life as opposed to the cheerful chaos I grew up amidst. A desire for a more ‘motherly’ mother than the ones I grew up around. Regressive, I know, but the heart wants what the heart wants.
The truth is that when I got pregnant I had every intention of going back to work within three months and then one thing lead to another and I ended up getting hooked on the Brat and refusing to look a full time job in the eye. My logic being that I couldn't possibly go to work and quit to have my second one in a few months. And then the Bean happened and is slowly getting weaned now and the pressure from family is back. Go back to work is the message and they aren't very subtle about it. Even my brother subtly says stuff that indicates that he'd like to see me back in office soon. The OA would like me to go back to work but doesn't want to influence me either way because he knows that if it doesn't work out, he'll never hear the end of it.
Now the suggestion is that I leave the Brat after school in daycare for about three hours more. That is it. Not much. Just about three hours more. Here are the reasons why. The Brat enjoys school, hates leaving while the daycare kids keep playing and cries on the way home to go back to his friends and the tricycles. So that of course makes him the easiest candidate for daycare. At least for a few hours, says the OA and the rest of the family. I am always crying about how this house has no outdoor area and how I want the Brat to enjoy cycling around in a garden and playing in a sand pit. Well the school has a daycare which is clean and well cared for and the kids are happy no matter what time I go. So I can no longer use that excuse!
He also eats the meal given in school with much less fuss. A lot more nutritious stuff goes down his throat than I can manage at home. The teacher praises my fussy eater and calls him one of the best. So it seems a healthier option if I don't allow my ego to get in the way and refuse to accept that someone else can feed my child better. I want to do what is best for him. And at this point logically the two or three extra hours per day at the daycare seems to be the best for the Brat. It gives him more company and the open space I crave for him.
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