Why Caring About the World Matters
And why your personal passion will thrive in context of the bigger picture.
Sudden Arguments
Have you ever gotten into one of those random late night disagreements with your partner about deep underlying shit that only surfaces when you’re not expecting it to?
Yeah.
It sucks.
But it can be illuminating nonetheless.
And maybe you’re one of those people, like I am, that finds it ever so much easier to process and resolve my own perspective and stance on an issue by writing it out.
Not by trying to convince someone who has dug in their heels on an opposing point of view.
So what are the Deep Questions?
I’m currently staring, with a total lack of clarity or resolution, at these two questions:
1. Does the world outside our home actually matter? As much as I believe it does?
2. Does what we choose in each moment actually CREATE the change we want to see in the world? Or at least create enough change to make a noticeable difference?
Are these either or questions? Or are they both taking valid, if dichotomous approaches to solving the issues facing humanity?
Individual Satisfaction vs Cultural Transformation
The reality is probably that the most enjoyable and sustainable path lies somewhere in the middle.
I want my own human experience to exist more within the story of interbeing than the story of the separated reality. This is even though I know we all experience a bit of both in total.
The world doesn’t matter
My partner is 100% convinced that what he chooses to do with his precious moments on this earth is of FAR more importance to the well-being of the universe than the pointless act of worrying about things he can’t control or doesn’t experience.
He’s focused on our nuclear family and raising our kids in the kind of world we WANT to see.
And he thinks my fascination with the effect of our culture on our experience is kind of pointless, and a waste of energy.
We’ll see what happens when we next connect, but in this moment I just want to throw his rigid ideas under a fucking bus.
It’s not that his are not noble ideas. It’s just that I don’t see things in such stark black and white.
It does matter!
I read Noah Hawley’s excellent piece On Raising Sons earlier tonight.
It got me thinking about the crush my son has on a girl in his class, and how I can relate to him as his mother to make sure he takes the excellent advice to have girls as friends before he has girlfriends.
Noah’s post explains this advice in detail.
I happen to agree with him.
But when I mentioned this thought to my husband, he took it personally for some reason.
Like I was an angry feminist that he had to put back in her proper place.
Maybe there is something to the idea that circumcision creates a kind of Stockholm syndrome in men — where they learn to identify and protect a world that thinks it’s ok to mutilate them at birth.
There is the idea that men grow up defending the system that failed to protect them at their most vulnerable.
There has to be some psychological hardening of the soul when allow the most sensitive part of men’s physical body to be cut off and discarded.
What other message could that possibly send to men? Brutality doesn’t matter, get over it and move on with your life!
Be the change? Or what?
His concept of the world he wants us to create here seems to override my clear recognition that my kids are getting domesticated into the same bullshit that I grew up with.
The stuff I’m currently working to unweave within my own life.
The stuff he’s a victim to as well, even if he’s not aware of it. Yet.
I don’t disagree that our personal choices have great impact on our personal experiences. But that is not all of the story.
What is this bullshit?
It’s the idea that people are all separate from one another, and the idea that individuals winning or losing power matters more than the well-being of the many.
It’s the myth that some people are more important than other people.
It’s the story of the hierarchy of domination.
It can look like this —
Various forms of sexual or economic domination:
Or how we raise our children to disconnect, and protect themselves from a hostile world:
Or how people with money have choices that people without can only hope to find:
It’s the foolish idea of manifest destiny.
It’s built into the practice of Amazonian deforestation for profit.
We are all connected
No. It is not a slight to the male half of humanity to recognize and realize that the patterns of domination being broadcast to all of us are playing out on a gendered stage.
It is meant as a gift actually. To humanity, from individual humans.
It is not a comment that the world at large is more important and more influential on our individual experiences than the care we give to our own children as they grow.
They both matter. A lot.
We must look at BOTH the way the world, and the nurture/nature of homelife will shape the children of tomorrow.
I’ll just say it.
Honestly this is what I get for robbing the cradle. 🥴
He doesn’t know yet. And maybe he’ll never really get it. I’m not sure which one it might be.
He never experienced what motherhood in my late 30’s and early 40’s has BRIGHTLY ILLUMINATED regarding the gender inequity of parenting as professionals.
He doesn’t see how society cheers him on to pursue actualization, while my career suddenly doesn’t weigh NEARLY as much as the expectations of motherhood.
He doesn’t understand the cost I’ve paid to make the choice to breastfeed my kids for 2 years and 18 months respectively, and to keep them home from daycare has excised my passions from day to day life.
He DOES know that his work is an important support to our family, so that we can AFFORD to make these choices.
And to his credit, he fucking hustles to support us all.
For which I am grateful. And for which reason I can see beyond this disagreement to our continued and strong relationship.
But the world really does matter too
It makes me speechless and infuriated that I can attempt to see his POV, while he flat out calls mine baloney. It’s insulting to say the least!
I’m glad that he doesn’t want to perpetuate the crap of the world onto what he thinks is the clean psyche of our kids.
Except that they already live in this world, and they’re already being informed by its dysfunction.
They’re being taught power over, by the Rescuebots and DinoTrux and PJ Masks.
They live in a world where staggering income inequality and sexual predation are all too common.
They also live in the world that’s watching Greta Thunberg take her personal concerns to the world stage and be heard, affecting a change in global consciousness in under a year. With a poster, social media, and a fearless conviction of her right to speak up.
In fact Greta is actually the epitome of personal passion thriving in a global context.
Which is my point.
We don’t have the luxury of believing that we, as individual cells of the universe, can exist in solitude.
Interrelating is no longer optional. It’s what is happening, like it or not.
So I guess…
We’ll end up having a discussion tomorrow about this, and hopefully we will be able to find common ground in our shared desire to raise our kids well.
Hopefully this difference in our perspectives won’t infect our marriage beyond repair.
Hopefully we can find understanding. Funny how it all comes down to this.
Choice, intent, and effective communication.
As Jessica WildFire puts it — soulmates are nonsense. Love thrives only when we make the choice to make it so.
Would love your thoughts on this one. Agree? Disagree? Have other points to add? Please do!
#onelove
