A
Curious Mind
“Life
shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
Anais Nin
I made the mistake of
going to see the movie, “The Wife,” yesterday. Glen Close gives
an Oscar-worthy performance, but after the week we've been through,
it was icing on a stone-cold cake. I won't give the plot away, but
suffice it to say that it portrays the “ideal woman” according to generations of humans—one whose fealty to her man is never in
question, no matter what he may do. It reminded me of Tammy Wynette's
country song, “Stand By Your Man,” a ballad that accurately
reflected the feminine ideal of the 1950's and '60's. I want to say
this, and then I'm going to move on—men didn't do this damage to
women single-handed. Women, at least Southern women, taught their
daughters to be “ladies,” whose highest calling was to serve
their husbands. Let me just say that bad cat's out of the bag now, and good luck
stuffing it back in.
Eleanor Roosevelt said
this: “I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by
the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.
Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason,
turn his [her] back on life.” Whoever you are, if you have a
curious mind, you will never be content to sit on the sidelines and
be absorbed into someone else's life—no matter how important that
someone else may be. If you are a woman endowed with curiosity,
don't think for one second that that good mind is not God's gift to
you, and you're expected to put it to use in the service of
humanity. Remember the light-under-a-bushel parable? We are all meant to
let our light shine, period.
As to a woman's role, it
should, in my opinion, be whatever she chooses. If a woman wants to
be a homemaker, mother and wife, and forgo a career in order to do
that, she is a making a perfectly good choice. The same can be said
for men who make that choice. It's wonderful that some young men are
now deciding to be the primary parent to their children—there is no
more important job for the edification of humanity than to have
dedicated parents. One of the greatest boons of our growing
consciousness is that more people are having the courage to cross the
barrier of static gender roles. It didn't happen overnight, but thank
God, it's finally coming into its own.
And, courage is what it
takes. If we want life to expand rather than contract, we must have
the courage to step out of the shadows and into the light. The Al-Anon
folks put it more starkly: “If you don't like being a doormat
then get up off the floor.” Amen.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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