soapboxdiner

Breathe

Do you know, Dear Diaryland, that I am a 38-year-old woman? It's true. I have been alive in the United States for 38 years. I'm now old enough to say with full assuredness that I do not know it all. I can also say that I am thankful for that fact.

I'm a full-time college student. I am a former full-time woman of the workforce. I am a full-time parent and a full-time spouse. I have a good life, and I am thankful to say I am fortunate enough to have people who love me.

I've seen many things. Perhaps you've seen them too. I say that because I know my story isn't any more or less extraordinary than anyone else's. But perhaps my experience resonates.

I am inspired by our young people who care about our world. They act with a resoluteness that I remember from a time when I wasn't so cynical. In a way, I envy their assuredness that they can affect the changes that I have become too jaded to wish for.

I'm taking a couple psychology courses this quarter. I lie awake at night thinking about the principles I'm studying. I think about the Self and self-efficacy like a good admirer of Bandura. I think about class and my age cohort. I see the gap between where I am and where many of my associates operate. I find myself very much less optimistic than they. I am pained by the separation.

When I lie awake at night, I think about the great minds I study, and their accomplishments. Some of them, like me, do not fit the norm. They inspire me.

But still there is this disconnect between the greats, myself, and what the real world tells me. I am tired, Diaryland, of discussing my past. I want nothing to do with it. I am striving to create myself anew. So when I am asked, "What did you do for X person/company?" the little nonconforming part of me wants to scream, just a little, "What does it matter? I am more than the sum of my past experiences." Yet I don't, because to do so would only expand the chasmic divide I already sense behind pleasant smiles.

I have a story and a purpose. It doesn't jive with society. I'm almost OK with that, except for when I think about how I'm supposed to support myself and my family. It is only then that I realize I must adjust. And I hate that realization and reality.

Inside me, there is a story that could make the world cry and feel and empathize. It calls for the world to slow down, to breathe, and to feel how out of synch we are with anything natural or holistic. I would tell it, but my sense is that the world is too busy being busy to pay any heed.

There is something beautiful in slowing down to contemplate the world and our place in it. There is something valuable in forgetting age or gender or socioeconomic status. There is something missing in our world when we marginalize outliers. Sometimes the outliers aren't crazy. Sometimes they simply visualize a reality different from the one we have created.

4:42 pm - 11.23.11
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