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| My grandparents as newlyweds at a New Years Eve party, 1945 |
Going through my grandmother's belongings as we pack up the apartment she lived in for the last 27 years of her life, I am contemplating what it means to lead a good life. My grandmother was well-loved by her neighbors, friends, and family. She cared for everyone around her, looked out for people, and was a lot of fun to be around. Many people attended her funeral, came to visit when we sat shiva during the mourning period, or sent cards with fond memories of my grandmother. As we go through her apartment, I am finding the many mementos she collected that had meaning for her including playbills from the broadway shows and operas she attended, matchbooks from hundreds of meaningful events over the years, and thousands of photos of her family. From these mementos, it is clear that art, celebrations, and family were the most important things in her life.
Personally, I have measured the quality of my life primarily through external achievements. And yet, in looking at my grandmother's life, these are not the means by which she lived a good life. The meaning of her life lay in the deep relationships she maintained with friends and family, and in the way she took care of her neighbors. These are character traits of hers that I emulate. As I learn to slow down, live more in the present, and experience my emotions more fully, I hope that my life will contain many of the same qualities as hers did.
This really touched my heart. I resonate so much with what you shared. Since I began my own mindfulness practice a few years ago, and as I've begun to reevaluate my own life choices and how I prioritize my time, I find myself focusing less and less on how my productivity might be measured and so much more on how warm, embraced and open my heart feels with each moment I live. It's so beautiful to hear you say this... in your words I can feel your grandmother's love, and it's so powerful.
ReplyDeletekalil, this is moving and wise. your grandma would have loved this, methinks.
ReplyDeleteplease keep writing!
Yep.
ReplyDeleteThat's it.
Oh yeah - why did it seem so easy for them?
They knew how much worse it could be?
Hmmm.
10 years later and I have seen massive shifts in this. I still have a significant internal conflict between prioritizing my achievements and my relationships, but the balance has shifted astronomically in this time. I am still an introvert and often prefer to be alone making art, producing cultural events, or sharing myself through writing vs. being in person having depthful connection with people. And, the percentage of time that I feel available for meaningful connection has increased significantly.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons for this is that I find it a lot easier now to track and know my own experience, my own energy, my own internal world, while in connection with others. I used to not know my own experience was until I was alone, so I needed to have a lot of time to recalibrate and process after each social experience. That is still true to some extent, but I am able to do some of that in real time as well, while being close with others.
One specific example of this - I used to share almost every intimate thought and feeling in my journal first, and then secondarily with others in conversation if it happened to come up. Now, I often find that I have fully processed something with another person in conversation, and don't find it particularly helpful to journal. I still journal when I don't know how I feel and need to orient to myself, but it's way less present in my life than it was when I didn't have the capacity to do that relationally.
I also see the gendered and generational differences between my experience and my grandmother's. She lived at a time when women were valued for their relational ties, and for the ways in which they wove their communities together. These days, we still need and crave those contributions, but they are undervalued and almost impossible to generate in a world where everyone needs to engage in paid work and there isn't a structure for half the population to be focused on creating community.
A significant revelation since the shift in women's roles in society in the 1970s is that we grossly underestimated what would become of society once women entered the work force and could no longer offer the level of community care that had been their unpaid and under-appreciated labor.
While women still significantly contribute this unpaid emotional labor, it is way less than when it was their actual job in families and communities. And thus we all suffer the enormous consequences of the disintegration of community. I obviously don't want things to return to the social conditions that previously dictated women's work as the weavers of community. And yet, how can we revalue and restructure society so that this crucial work can happen?
Wow, this one is really landing for me in preparation for a community formation conversation. I feel the displacement of this calling and skill set. This broader social context is so helpful to me. Thank you!
ReplyDelete