I stumbled across his book after a friend posted a link to the author’s speech. You should watch it first. It will give you a really good idea what his book is about. Plus he’s a really entertaining speaker.

His book is called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, and oh my is it ever true. He makes a lot of beautiful points about what it takes to find what he calls “the element”: that nexus between aptitude and passion, where what you’re good at meets what you love doing. Through countless examples of really successful people who found success through extraordinary means, Robinson shows how so many people go through life thinking they are not creative, or they’re not particularly good at anything, when nothing could be further from the truth. But true creativity, authenticity, and talent gets crushed by our educational system because it promotes one kind of success, one way of thinking, one route to fulfillment, and it’s becoming ever more standardized and forces children ever more towards conformity.

But when it comes to learning and growing and performing, there is not just one style. He says, “Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play. This turns possible underachievers into happy warriors.” Never underestimate the importance of work that for you is play. We have such a social stigma, don’t we, against actually enjoying our work? People who love their jobs are said to be the lucky ones. Imagine what life would be like if we all allowed ourselves to pursue work that was our passion. Work we hate takes too much energy. It saps the life out of us. Work we love? It gives us energy. It gives us life. And yet, we put ourselves in “sensible jobs” to pay the bills, have stability, etc. because we’ve been told what we really love isn’t a viable option. But as Robinson says, “doing something ‘for your own good’ is rarely for your own good if it causes you to be less than who you really are.”

This isn’t just about personal fulfillment either. If people are pursuing their passions, they work to the fullest of their capacity. Therein lies the magic to maximizing human potential. We don’t just need this as individuals. We need this as a society to grow.

This message isn’t just for the young trying to find their way. It’s for anyone still looking. It’s for mothers with children for whom school doesn’t have a spark, or doesn’t tap into and allow enough space for learning in the area where the child’s heart is. It’s for people looking for a second or even third career. It encourages you to think about how it is you think and learn, in what ways you are intelligent and passionate. And it re-envisages the boundless ways you can use your particular strengths. Maybe you’re really good at memorizing baseball stats. Useless as that may seem to others, who knows…you could just be a really fantastic sports team manager. Maybe you love gardening…who knows, maybe there’s a life for you in landscape design. The point is, it is never too late to try to find it.

He makes a fabulous point about how the education system only prepares for the world as it is now and leaves us hopelessly unprepared for a changing and dynamic future. But the future is incredibly dynamic. Think how much change has occurred just over the past 2 decades. Can any of us say with any certainty what 2030 will look like?

I’m increasingly convinced too that the one career or one job for your entire working lifetime model of our parents’ generation is becoming obsolete. I think that for many industries and avenues for work, many of my generation will have multiple jobs and multiple careers over the span of their lifetime. Being able to adjust and roll with this requires a great deal of versatility and flexibility. It requires thinking about your skill set in broad, open-minded ways. For many of us, I think even the idea of working for large corporations is anathema to our deepest desires and happiness. Many will venture out on their own, as small business owners, freelancers, or otherwise self-made men and women. And for many of these paths, a college degree is not exactly what it takes to succeed.

Did I just really say that? *gasp* Yes I did. After teaching undergrads at the university level for the past 5 or so years, I’ve really begun to feel that pushing kids into college for that “all-mighty degree” is a mistake (perhaps one of even colossal proportions). We are told that you can’t get anywhere anymore without a college degree. Yet, once you get past the interview stage for most jobs…for how many of us has that degree actually mattered? It’s all about what you can do and what you have done. Meanwhile, kids plunk tens of thousands of dollars into a college education and at least 4 years (now going on 5 or more with budget cutbacks), and most students are just not plugged in. They’re not particularly interested in the subjects, certainly not as interested as they are in what grade they’ll get at the end and so they end up just floating through the whole experience. What an enormous waste of time and money for the students, and of expertise and know-how on the part of professors.

Of course I think education is important. But I don’t like this boilerplate model we’re adopting. I think many students would be far better served taking some time off after high school to work or travel to find out what it is that really motivates them. When they find their passion, then they should go to school for it. They’d get far more out of the experience. And it may be that a university is not the best place for them to learn. For a lot of careers, what employers are looking for is talent, not a GPA and magna cum laude. So it may be that looking into a trade school or a series of workshops and working internships is the way to go. Some guidance and feedback is always helpful. But sometimes people really do just learn best and discover their own unique contributions most efficiently simply by doing.

Anyway, take a look at the speech. If it speaks to you, I urge you to try the book.

Both of these articles stuck with me, and I think, though both were addressed to gendered audiences, their lessons and values apply universally. So I wrote a whole long deal on the importance of hobbies and re-engaging in time honored skills like cooking, sewing, gardening, woodworking, mechanics, photography, writing (including blogging)…whatever. And then I scrapped it. I was trying to capture all of the suns’ rays as through a glass, and found the words did not burn on the paper (paraphrasing Ginsberg here).

But creative outlets are so important – even if you think you’re a person who isn’t very creative. The act of creating something uniquely your own is powerful and not to be underestimated. It’s practical, for developing these skills can save money and reduce waste. It’s good for your sense of pride: to look at something you’ve made and know it’s been made well. And it’s good for your self-esteem: for if you develop skills in different areas, and one area goes to sh*t, you have something else to keep you going. It’s liberating and it’s like meditation. Often I find when I bump into a problem in one area of my life, if I shut off and do something else entirely, focus and concentrate on cooking or baking or whatever, when I come back to that problem, an answer is there waiting for me. I even count sports and various forms of exercise in this because they can be meditative too. Maybe they don’t produce anything tangible (other than perhaps sweat, blood or tears…), but they do create good energy that can help focus or calm you in other areas. And because these creative outlets are so important, I really think it is essential that not only we each as individuals carve out time for them, but that we support our loved ones (spouses especially) and give them the space they need to pursue them too, even if those hobbies incur costs.

I recently started teaching myself to sew. I’ve done a couple projects here and there, but I’ve never really made a concerted effort to learn before. My husband taught me how to use the machine since he had a Home Ec class in high school and I never did (how’s that for feminism for you?). I got a couple of beginner’s books and spent $7 at a thrift store on some old napkins and pillowcases that I repurposed to make a vintage style apron.

Before:

After:

If you look closely, those ruffles are all total crap. And don’t look at the back of it either.

Though, I kind of like these details:

Worth it to no longer be tempted to buy the $35 ones at Anthropologie.

Then, using scraps I had from earlier projects, I made a cover for my kindle.

I just have to be a little delicate with it, or the bottom pops out

Then, for my birthday, my hubby got me some gorgeous fabrics and yesterday I made a wraparound skirt. The apron isn’t great. The kindle cover needed a little retooling, but mostly it works. But the skirt? I LOVE. Because it’s totally mine, and though it’s not perfect either, I finally started getting the hang of things. (It helped to have proper tools: oh rotary cutter, how I love thee.)

Sewing isn’t easy for me, mostly because it requires patience, and patience has never been one of my virtues. But it’s precisely for that reason I’m trying really hard to commit to it. With sewing, you really have to take things one step at a time. You can’t take shortcuts or the final product will suffer for it. And doing things right the first time saves you a lot of grief in the end.

But with this last project, every time I started getting frustrated and felt tempted to rush or cut corners, I just told myself, “Make with love, not haste. Make with love, not haste.” It helped.

That scattered feeling I’ve been having lately? Slowly, I’m starting to burnish the edges of it off. I’m thinking maybe it is worthwhile to take a moment to get centered again so I can refocus and do a better job of things.

Through this challenge, I think my definition of feminism has not really changed, but I am much more inclined to call myself a feminist. I am a feminist in the sense that I care deeply about women’s issues and righting injustices and preventing harm from coming to the innocent.

BUT.

Though I call myself a feminist, I find myself increasingly disenchanted with a lot of feminist media these days. I’ve been following Bitch PhD and Bitch Magazine, and at first I appreciated their insight…until it started to seem as though “bitch” refers less to “empowered, self-realized woman” and more to the verb: for bitching seems to be just about all they do.

I have a problem with feminism when it says we need to break down societal expectations of what WOMAN should be – only to hiss and moan when women don’t choose their particular “liberated” vision of woman. It denies freedom of choice. It denies individual expression. It denies that there might be some value to the way some things have been done for centuries. And it denies the hard fact of biological proclivities. Women should not be forced to stay in the kitchen if their talents and interests push them into the office. But neither is it bad if a woman actually enjoys what she does in the kitchen. It’s stupid to pretend everything is socially constructed.

I have a problem with feminism when all it does is complain about the media. Bitch Magazine is one long series of gripes about some aspect of popular culture that did something to get their panties in a twist – interspersed with maybe a few anecdotes of examples that suit their ideal. It’s not a call to action; it’s a glorified tally sheet. It doesn’t inspire; it just hits the same button ad nauseum like a Pavlovian dog. It’s not forward thinking; it has become reactionary. Yes, there are problems with today’s media. Yes, there are elements of patriarchy dominating society (75 cents on the dollar, anyone?). But as far as I’m concerned, you can only push the victim button so many times before I lose sympathy – even if I’m in the same boat. There’s only so many times you can cry “victim” before I’m going to ask: Ok, but what are you doing to become a “survivor”?

I have a problem with feminism when it seeks to include minority voices – but then rejects the legitimacy of white, male voices. Far be it from me to be the vanguard of privileged white males! And I’m pretty sure anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis would know that. But I think it’s a false claim of “open, honest discussion” when white males are excluded. Yeah they’ve dominated the discussion for centuries, and yeah I’ll think some opinions are total crap, but that doesn’t mean they should be denied a place at the table when we discuss what we want of our society. (Maybe that’s because my husband is white and male, but I do value his opinion.)

So through a closer look, I’ve discovered that a lot of feminism is pretty much what I thought it was, and that is sad. However, through reading a lot of literature about strong women, I’ve come to remember once again what it is about the feminine voice that is worth listening to. Hearing women’s perspectives on the world and learning more about women’s contributions to society has animated me and activated me to do something more to help where it hurts. I don’t cry foul when girls wear pink, but I do take umbrage when girls give up on an education one week out of every month because they don’t have a bathroom separate from the boys. I don’t think it’s a travesty if women find role models from generations past, but I do shed tears when women are mutilated because it’s taboo to say “stop”. I don’t really care about the messages that pervade pop culture. I do care about the messages sent by parents, teachers, and church leaders, for these are messages sent every day by the people children love. They’re not something that can be shut off with a flick of a power switch. So, I haven’t become a feminist of the academic variety. Instead, I’ve become inspired to pursue my own brand of feminism, for whatever that’s worth.

I personally don’t find this lack problematic at all. I think it’s good for people to have role models. But it doesn’t follow that those role models must be all-in-one: my same demographic, same values, and same generation. That would leave little to aspire to, in my opinion. I looked to different people for different things. Some were women; some were men. Most were older – for how many 13-year-olds are truly accomplished? And they came from a myriad of backgrounds. What they had were various things I admired: Jackie O. for her grace and femininity, the Dalai Lama and Rev. Desmond Tutu for their compassion and humility, my mother and father for their strength…there’s no shortage of capable and amazing people in this world. These people did not even need to be indisputable paragons of virtue either. It was my vision of who they were and what they stood for that was important.

As for the lack of consensus on values, I again don’t find this problematic. Diversity is a good thing: it keeps us aware of our limitations and provides balance. When it comes to the difficulty of finding a handful of people to inspire a generation en masse, I think it is the result of a more rich and diverse society and a larger, more diverse media. Generations past, people had the choice of maybe 3 TV stations. Now they have hundreds. Back then it was probably easier to have a small handful of voices captivate the nation. But with so much competition nowadays, it’s more difficult for one person to reach the whole nation. The options now are so diverse you can easily individualize what you are exposed to and almost literally create your own experience. It’s more likely that you’ll get what you want and minimize exposure to what you don’t want, but it does lead to fragmentation, polarization, and disassociation. Add to that an increasingly diverse society, people just aren’t going to be moved en masse by the same ideals anymore. Instead, they find their niches.

However, having such fragmentation does raise a question that the article did touch upon, and that is: what does this mean for the collective? What are the consequences for collective goals and unity? I’m not sure anyone really knows the answer to that at this point. I do think there are signs, though, that our society is going through a massive and fundamental change. Post-financial crisis, people are taking a step back and rethinking their goals, and what they want their legacy to be. And I think there’s a lot going on where people are eschewing old boundaries and “ways things have to be done” and trying more innovative strategies (for example, finding ways to have the flexibility to work from home instead of at the office). With the help of the internet, I think communal ties are being redrawn: shaped less by locale and more by interest. In a way, things are becoming a little more small-d democratic. I personally find it inspiring to watch and I think the end result could be really empowering for a lot of people.

But when I posted that opinion elsewhere, the response was that defining community by superficial and transitory interests cheapens community, that we risk losing our depth as a community if we relegate it all to electronic media instead of spending time just being human, and that rather than people becoming more authentic, there is more of a herd mentality going on.

I don’t take such a bleak view. I think finding others who are also motivated by social justice, or organic gardening, or photography, or whatever can be profoundly inspiring – even if they’re thousands of miles away from you. I think it deepens our ability to connect with and empathize with people who are far away from us. I think the disaster in Haiti and the millions of dollars raised showed just how powerfully people can empathize with one another and how that empathy can be facilitated through electronic media. Sure we weren’t all on the ground there, helping people out of the rubble. But does that make the empathy – and dollars raised – any less meaningful? And just because we make ties through electronic media, that doesn’t mean our ties to family must be any less important. Connecting with people all across the globe does not diminish the quality of time I spend with my family and friends here at home.

Being social animals, I think there are a lot of impulses in human nature that produce conformity or cause people to follow others. I don’t think there’s any more evidence of a herd mentality than there ever was in history. To think so, I think is to forget a lot of human history. But when I look around me, I do see a lot of innovative thinking and a lot of people finding new ways to approach problems and finding different ways to live their lives. Probably, through social media, I see more of it because it’s easier to see what common individuals are doing that maybe isn’t so common.

Sure there’s a lot going on that’s frustrating as all hell. Sure there are many things I wish could be better. But when I look around me, I can see a lot of reason to be hopeful for the future. I think society is going through a very profound change. Not all of it will be good. But I find some of it, at least, very inspiring and empowering.

But, for a short period, it would also be refreshing to go somewhere where we’re not surrounded by things. We live surrounded by so much abundance, but we (or I, at least) almost never see it. If I were to sit down and try to count every little item that I own personally, it would probably take days. Yet, I don’t feel I have that much – certainly less than others. And when I go shopping, there are always things I can find to desire.

It just makes me wonder: what would it be like to look around me and see that all the items I own were ones I made with my own hands? What would it be like if I had only one, or at most, two outfits to wear, instead of changing clothes every day? (I’d certainly spend less time in front of the mirror trying to decide what to wear.) What would it be like to grow my own food, raise my own cattle, harvest and slaughter and cook, with my own two hands? (True, I don’t necessarily need to go back in time to do that…but I would, to enter a state where there were no other options.)

And I think, what would it be like to have family not only be the center but also be your entire universe? To have your days filled with common chores. To have all your aunts and sisters and cousins around you working together to make things. What would it be like to create everything we consume?

In part, I think it would be powerful, empowering, humbling, and lovely. But I also think it would really make me appreciate what I do have when I came back to this time and this place. I do appreciate what I have on some levels, but this would add a whole new dimension.

Maybe we can no longer really live in a place where we create everything we consume. But it might be worthwhile to try to create more than we consume. Or, at the very least, be more mindful of how much we consume versus how much we create. I hope when I do leave this earth, I’ll not have just used, but I’ll also have given. I hope, when I leave, I leave behind something worth the space I have taken.

What would you do, if you could travel in time?

The Rules
You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the post, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.

Next week’s challenge: My worst fear and its consequences
FOR A MILLION EXTRA BONUS POINTS: If you want to take on an extra challenge, try to write a story in which you don’t tell us explicitly what your worst fear is, but you play out in your head and through words what would happen if your worst fear was realized. We just might surprise ourselves with what we find here.

Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok

The biological clock is ticking and my hubby and I are thinking we’re getting close to being ready to try for kids soon (by soon, I mean probably sometime next year – after we get settled, organized, gather our wits about us, etc.). However, given our plans to move and everything, there is a very distinct possibility that our first child will be born in Thailand (but, through us, can still have US citizenship). Since I have an anal tendency to obsessively research everything, naturally I’ve already looked into this.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time already looking into childbirth and care in the U.S., reading up on how there are some very important hormonal and developmental things that happen between mother and child during the birthing process and cesareans hijack and prohibit them from occurring. Of course cesareans are a godsend in times of need, but there’s growing evidence that a whole slew of unnecessary interventions occur because the mother isn’t going through labor “fast enough” for hospital desires and wishes. There are a lot of decisions to make and options to learn about, but I think one thing is clear for me and that is I want to avoid a cesarean as much as possible (you know, assuming everything goes along as it should).

Thailand is known for having top-quality care available, at rates much more affordable than the U.S. Many of the top doctors in Thailand trained at top medical universities like Johns Hopkins in the U.S., and then go back to Thailand and work there. (Even the King of Thailand was actually born in Cambridge because his father, Prince Mahidol, studied medicine at Harvard – and later became a figure revolutionizing health practices in Thailand.) We hear a lot of stories about people from western countries flying to Thailand for surgeries, with great success, and – flight included – still end up paying less than they would here. My hubby’s even planning to have lasik surgery done while we’re there. So my initial reaction was not to worry about my ability to find good care in Thailand – especially since, in Thailand, for the right price you can basically get whatever you want.

But then I found out something that freaked me the eff out. So, as a reference, the WHO puts a healthy national cesarean rate around 5-10%. There has been a movement to raise awareness and concern about the U.S.’s cesarean rates that are skyrocketing upward from about 4.5% in the mid-1960′s when it was first measured to a high of about 32% in 2007. In Thailand, that rate is around 34% nationwide, and as high as 51% in private hospitals.

I started to worry that it would be difficult to find a doctor who would present me with clear information about my options. I started to fear that I would get pressured into something because it was better for the hospital, but that I’d be too far in pain to think clearly about it. I started to worry about all the precautions and extra arrangements I’d have to make to come back to the U.S….flying while pregnant, staying with parents, possibly being separated from my husband, the extra costs…let the panic attacks commence.

But then I talked to my mom (who was born, raised, and well-educated in Thailand) about my concerns. And she laughed. She said the reason cesareans are so high in Thailand is because women ask for them. They want cesareans so they can plan their child’s birth to fall on a “lucky” day, astrologically. Or, like even some members of my own dear family, they opt for them to keep their special woman parts looking pretty(!).

Oh, said I.

Well, in that case, I think I can stop panicking. I’m pretty sure a “honeymoon” va-jay-jay is not at the top of the list of my concerns.

For the longest time, I’ve always thought I had a personal deficiency when it came to arguing with others. When someone says something offensive or something that makes me hurt or angry, I have a tendency to shut down. I would love to be able to defend myself or to call them out on the hurtful or undermining comment they made, but I am often physically incapable of doing so. My body shuts down on me and I am unable to process. And it often isn’t until hours – or even days – later that I figure out precisely why I was so angry and how I would have like to have responded.

Turns out, the female brain is hardwired this way. As Brizendine explains, “even if a woman wanted to express her anger right away, often her brain circuits would attempt to hijack the response, to reflect on it first out of fear and anticipation of retaliation.” The female brain is extremely averse to conflict, due to fear of angering others and losing relationships. Though women may be slower to act out of anger than are men, once aroused, they can “unleash a barrage of angry words that a man can’t match.”

This little tidbit is but one morsel of fascinating information I’ve come across in reading these two books: The Male Brain and The Female Brain. In both books, the author culls together analysis from all kinds of neuropsychiatry, biology, and cognitive psychology to explain what it is scientists have learned about the human brain – all in language that is witty, fun, and easy accessible to anyone who isn’t familiar with big scientific words (my hand is in the air). In a lot of ways, these books begin to answer the nature versus nurture questions…but often we discover it works in ways we didn’t quite expect.

I think, a lot more than we anticipate, human behavior begins with our hormones and chemicals in the brain. And more often than not, our behavior and how we even perceive the world is gender specific. Plus it changes as we go through different parts of our life cycle.

Here are just a few other interesting morsels to whet your appetite:

- By seven months, a boy can tell by his mother’s face when she’s angry or afraid, but by 12 months, he becomes so immune to them, he can easily ignore her expressions. But a subtle expression of fear on a mother’s face would stop a baby girl in her tracks.

- There is a gene called the vasopressin receptor gene. In men, a longer version of this gene tends to produce monogamy, whereas shorter versions of this gene produce philanderers. So when it comes to fidelity, longer actually is better – at least if you’re talking about the vasopressin receptor gene!

- Apparently, the way that daddies play with their children tends to be more creative and unpredictable – and thus more stimulating, making their kids more curious and improving their ability to learn. Children whose fathers play more roughly with them tend to be the most self-confident by adolescence. But the sweet spot: dads bond with daughters by helping to solve their problems – and this is true whether the daughter is 4 or 44, whether the problem is a broken doll or a financial portfolio.

- Girls are years ahead of boys in their ability to observe and mirror gestures, expressions, postures, gazes, and breathing rates as a way of intuiting how others are feeling. This is the secret of female intuition or a woman’s ability to read others’ minds. Imagining another’s emotional state actually triggers similar brain patterns in the observer and females are really good at this kind of emotional mirroring. They are sometimes able to intuit how a man is feeling before the man himself is able to figure it out.

- Women’s brains are smaller than men’s in size, but they have the same number of brain cells. When women become pregnant, their brain size actually shrinks more as the brain circuitry rewires itself for motherhood and some country roads in the brain become superhighways. But by six months after childbirth, the brain returns to its usual size. The sweet smell of a baby’s head carries pheremones that stimulate a deep hunger to have a child. The pheremones produced by a pregnant woman may actually cause neurochemical changes in her mate, preparing him to be a doting father and equipping him – through smell! – with some of the special nurturing mechanisms of the mommy brain.

- Dads might be slower to figure out how to respond to their baby’s cries, but the ways that they interact and bond with their children is vital – and different – from mothers. Having daily hands-on contact is critical in developing parent-child synchrony AND when moms encourage the dad’s interactions with the child, it actually tends to strengthen the marriage.

So really, a lot of male and female behavior we might think are due to personality differences or societal influences actually have at least some basis in the makeup of our brains. However, a lot of these things are probably natural tendencies, but like anything else you learn in life, practice and repetition is important too. So, even though girls may be hardwired to act like girls and boys will be boys (sometimes regardless of socialization), certain traits are enforced and reinforced through parenting and practice.

If you ever feel there is something you just don’t understand about yourself or about the other sex, chances are, you’ll find an answer within these pages. These books are a must-read for, well…everybody!

However, there is one point Friedan touched on and I wish she had developed it more: and that is the role of the men. The edition I have is an updated one with a couple of added introductions. The chapter I found most intriguing was one of these introductions, where she reflects back, two generations later and assesses the change. What I love about this chapter is that she doesn’t just focus on what changes have occurred for women, but also the impact on society as a whole. And as Friedan observes, the truth is, changing a woman’s world means changing the world of men too and a lot of the feminist movement does not really address that. Meanwhile, books that take on the masculine mystique and focus on the “men’s movement” have largely been copies in reverse of women’s lib and are thus inauthentic. Or they are an outmoded brand of machismo that reflects only an obsolete form of masculinity.

I believe the problem is that such a paradigm shift does alter the identity of men, but somehow they’ve never really had a larger cultural conversation about where to go and how to change in positive ways along with women. What the women’s movement has focused on is the reactionary man who bemoans the loss of job and income and retaliates through sexual harassment and violence. What it neglects to consider is the larger proportion of men who do have a desire to be positive contributors to society, but who have along the way lost a clear role model and are left to fend for themselves in navigating personal ethics.

My husband and I have been watching a lot of Mad Men lately and it occurs to me that Don Draper is a portrait of the all-American male: the man every other man wished he was. He has a lot of charm, smooth power, wealth, looks. He’s got a beautiful wife and family, home and car. When it comes to office politics, he exercises a lot of power and control, but he does it with finesse. He keeps underlings in their place, but he also does not resort to cheap jokes at the expense of others. He remains quiet – or occasionally puts others in check – when they smear another man’s honor.

But for the modern man, the old paradigm doesn’t quite work anymore for today’s society. Man’s relationship to women has to change as he shares earning power and household politics with her, as he shares more household duties and the gender lines become blurred. Blurring these lines necessarily call masculinity into question, asking society to redefine what being male truly means. Fathers have also become problematic role models because through problems caused by divorce or changing societal values in a whole slew of issues, men often face disillusionment with their fathers. Many have difficult relationships with their fathers in which they either become so disillusioned they draw away from them or they have to suffer through a period in which they try to renegotiate a new relationship with their fathers. A relationship in which they reconcile themselves to the notion that their father may not be the hero they once thought their father should be, but at least they can accept him for who he is.

Among friends, role models become even harder to find. Susan Walsh has an excellent blog on today’s hookup culture, and what I draw from it is that there is often an identity schism for male friends as well. In the past, men would have looked up to and admired the alpha males, the Don Drapers of society. But today’s alpha male often comes across as…well, kind of a dick. The beta males might wish they had some of the things alpha males have…but they don’t really want to actually be who the alpha male is. They have to compete with them, but they don’t admire them anymore. Likewise, women might fall head over heels for the Don Draper type in the past. But today many women feel they have to choose. They choose the alpha male to have sex with, but when it comes to marriage, they want the beta males – because the alphas are all just misogynist a-holes. (Actually, increasingly women seem to be more attracted to men with more feminine features!) Women sometimes do fall in love with the alpha males, but they often want to change them, redeem them, tame them – thus turning them into more of a beta male. In which case, they don’t love the alpha male at all. Rather they love just an idea of him. And the guys who are really great guys often end up feeling like they finish last.

Without clear role models, the result is many men are left suffering an identity crisis – one that seems to last longer and longer. And we have movies like Up In The Air and Greenberg about men well into their 40′s, still struggling to figure out what they want from life and who they want to be.

The thing is, many men do want to be good fathers, good husbands, and positive contributors to their work place and community. They do want wives they can talk to and respect. Ethics are important to them, but they have discovered they must figure out for themselves what those ethics are. Measures of success are personal – not compared to the Jones’s. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, as long as it authentic and they can respect themselves as individuals, it is a good thing. But it is problematic when 62% of men say they miss the day when a person’s word and a handshake meant something. It is a problem when men report feeling lost, confused, left behind. It is a problem when men begin to fall behind women in school, dropping out at higher rates and performing poorly in classes.

Women’s liberation does not work if it comes at the expense of their husbands, friends, and sons. We haven’t changed societal mores if we repress or scoff at honest fears and concerns, when men feel they are muzzled by political correctness. We shouldn’t accept misogyny, but that doesn’t give us license to repress men either: that merely reverses the roles, but keeps us locked in obsolete rituals of power. What I love from Friedan’s chapter is that, even though she did not delve into the intricacies of the role of man today, she did end with a beautiful summation of what we should be trying to achieve: “Grown-up men and women….become more and more authentically themselves. And they do not pretend that men are from Mars or women are from Venus. They even share each other’s interests, talk a common shorthand of work, love, play, kids, politics. We may now begin to glimpse the new human possibilities when women and men are finally free to be themselves, know each other for who they really are, and define the terms and measures of success, failure, joy, triumph, power, and the common good, together.”

In short: equal, but in a way that simultaneously celebrates individuality, personality, and working together for the common good. What she doesn’t say, but what I think underlines her words is the necessity for mutual respect and open curiosity to engage each other.

What I’m about to say might seem counter-intuitive. And it might seem like I’m making something big out of something that should come naturally. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people.

Learning to love yourself is one of the hardest and most important things you can do in this life. Loving yourself doesn’t mean being selfish. It doesn’t mean putting your needs before someone else’s. And it doesn’t mean doing whatever you think is fun just for the sake of it.

Loving yourself means figuring out who you really are – a process that takes time, if for no other reason than the fact that you change over time. It means self-reflection. Repeatedly. Sometimes you like what you see, sometimes you don’t. And so you have to acknowledge that and figure out what parts you’re okay with and what parts you want to strive to change and make better. All of that takes time.

Loving yourself means respecting yourself. So you won’t put up with the BS of a hookup culture when what you really want is love. You won’t believe the lies of selfish men because you know what the actions of a worthwhile man look like. You’ll stand up for yourself when others put you down, but in ways that treat them with respect regardless.

Loving yourself means figuring out what would make you deep in your bones happy and reaching for it, even when others say you can’t have it. It means ignoring yourself when you say you can’t have it. Especially because you realize that happiness is not in the attainment of things or of money. It is in the stuff you cannot see.

It is a lie that you cannot love others when you don’t love yourself. You can indeed love others even without self-love. But you can love others better and more freely when you love yourself. When you don’t, there is too much need tangled up in the love and it is difficult to see which is which. There are more rules and obligations and less trust. Not so when you love yourself first.

There is more freedom in the space of love when you first love yourself.

All of this I say to you. With love,
Jade

What would you tell our nation’s daughters?

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Next week’s challenge: Souls

But I’m so tired of all the yelling and the screaming and the fighting and the LACK OF INFORMATION. On both sides now.

I want to punch the reset button.

I used to pride myself on tolerance, but I’ve plum run out. I’ve run out of tolerance for the name-calling, hyperbole, and the media feeding on it like maggots in the muck.

I’m pretty certain both sides are operating on a totally different set of facts. But it’s nigh impossible to get to the facts through all the effing ideology-driven drivel. I’m pretty certain we DO have common goals. But it would take a miracle to find them under all the derision.

I’m pretty dang firm in my ideology.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear information that might suggest that, hey, maybe I’m wrong and that there is a whole other set of facts to consider.

If you tell me my values are wrong, I’m gonna get pissed off. Just like I’m sure everyone else would. But, dangit. Why is it so hard now to put that aside and look at facts?

I’m pretty sure other people must be frustrated when they look at the other side and think: why can’t they see they’re being lied to? If they just knew {insert favorite bit of information here}, they would totally see things differently!

Truth? There’s so much lying and covering up, misrepresenting, and misunderstanding going on these days that yeah. We’ve probably all been lied to. The question is: can we uphold ourselves to a standard that the media seem to have forgotten? Maybe we can’t be objective, but can we learn to share information without a dose of vitriol on the side?

{Irony of ironies: some of the same quotes Democrats used to scream upon the lead up to the War in Iraq are now being screamed by Republicans over health care reform. Lesson? We do have shared values – we just apply them in different contexts.}

At the end of the day, I don’t expect us all to agree. At the end of the day, I’m actually quite sure we’d still vote differently from each other.

But maybe, just maybe…we’d understand each other a little bit better.

Maybe we’d have a little more respect for each other. Love thy neighbor.
(Even when thy neighbor is of a different political party. Right?)

And maybe we would be a little less angry when we didn’t get our way. We might actually like living in a democracy and feel represented, even when we are in the minority.

Maybe we can start with this: we all are patriots. We get so angry because we all care about our country.