On Compassion and The Self: #1000Speak
It is Friday night, and I am stealing a few moments at the computer to write these words. I have spent all day doing the things I can only do on my day off from work; a laundry list of odds and ends that keep life going and keep the house moderately clean. Between cleaning up the remains of dinner and putting fresh sheets on the bed, I have chosen myself, for a few moments at least. Many nights last semester I stayed up, red pen in hand, churning through the bottomless stack of papers to grade. It felt like the second I triumphantly finished the last essay, another stack would…
Giving and Taking
Giving. It’s what most women are trained to do pretty much since birth. Here’s this dolly, nurture it. Here’s this house, it’s your job to make sure it’s welcoming and clean. Don’t you want to learn to cook so you can find a husband someday? Give of yourself, it is your job to make others comfortable. Okay, maybe things have changed a little since I was a youngster (or at least I hope so), but women talk about guilt enough for it to be a pretty pervasive cultural condition. We feel guilty if our houses aren’t clean and well-decorated. We feel guilty sitting down to read, or watch TV, or paint our…
