Glass Ceilings

I wish that women could get out their own way long enough to stop making our entire gender look bad. Perhaps it is the position we find ourselves in. Having spent so many years demanding equality without thinking about what that would cost us. Without considering the damage we might do if someday we actually did break through the elusive and reinforced glass ceiling.

From business to politics to the tabloids, we may read about men failing, getting caught in scandals, being put in jail. But we aren't reading about the women at all - even those women who try to climb the corporate ladder, or reach the highest echelons of politics find themselves either riding the coat tails of, or being brought down by a man.

Now I am no feminist. But until we find a way to stop digging the divide between us deeper by believing we are playing on their home field with paid off refs, nothing will change. I'm thinking of starting a new movement...one in which women stop trying to compete with men at ever turn, and embrace the things in ourselves that make us valuable. Not as women in a man's world. But as people, in our world.

Resigned

I was talking to someone the other day and I said "you know I am really just resigned about my life right now." Their response: "That is awful you feel so hopeless." And I was confused.

I don't feel hopeless. I feel resigned. I feel like I do when I sit down at a Texas Hold 'Em poker game and the cards are dealt and the first round of betting has just begun. You have time to take a peak at your cards and you have to make a decision. Before the flop, before all the bets are down. Do you fold? Or do you play?

I am choosing to play. And that is what I mean by resigned. I am here. Sitting at the table with my two cards. I have made my bet. Now I have to wait and see how the hand plays out - knowing that along the way there will be crucial decisions that I will need to make to keep myself alive in the game. Resigned.

Merriam Webster defines it as: "to give oneself over without resistance." You will notice that definition, like the one I use, does not apply a positive or negative emotion to the word.

When I was teaching last year in New Orleans I focused a lot of time with my kids on the difference between the denotative definitions of words (how the dictionary defines them) and the connotative definitions of words (how we react to them or feel about them). The word resigned, like the word failure are both good examples where the denotative definition has long been lost to the connotative one. Perhaps it is time for new words...

Words out of Context

The Miami airport has words inscribed in the floor of the terminal. I think if you were to look at it the right way you would read something amazing. Something about Miami and its history and its culture and its environment and its people. But instead all I could see where words out of context.

"Soaked up, never given back." Absorbed into time. Who wrote that line? What did they mean it to go with? Were they talking about the environment? An experience? The sand? The sun? An old lover?

As I could not begin to understand the authors intent I was instead left in the Miami airport feeling somehow empty and confused. Able to only put my interpretation against them. But wanting desperately to understand the whole picture. To see something outside of my own context.

An addition to "trying"

One last thought that woke me up in the middle of the night last night. Failure is one of the things that makes us great. We should always seek to take risks and see the outcomes for what they are not just a failure or a success. I think what bothers me about how we use the word trying is that we use it to give ourselves an excuse to fail. To somehow soften the blow to ourselves and others.

When we stop fearing failure, we will also stop trying. And begin doing.

The Trouble with Trying

I was always told to "try the best I could". The implication being that if I tried my best, even if I failed, I had somehow succeeded. I have struggled with that concept always. I don't see how trying negates the failure. It doesn't mean we don't learn from trying. It doesn't mean that failing is a bad thing. But I have grown tired of the concept of simply trying to do something.

If change is desired badly enough whether it be to quit smoking, get a new job, leave a relationship, start exercising then you don't "try" to do it. You simply begin taking the step necessary to do it. It doesn't mean the path is always clear and easy. It doesn't mean you won't have setbacks. But it does mean you have banished trying.

It is easy to tell when someone has reached that point. Their vocabulary changes. They no longer say: "I am trying to quit smoking." They say: "I quit smoking." They don't say: I am going to try to get to the gym 3 times a week." They say: "I go to the gym 3 times a week.

I say we remove "try" from our vocabulary. We do, or we don't. And we live with that.

We

I remember when I was first in a serious relationship and one night on the phone with my mother I responded, "oh we're fine." She hadn't asked about us. She had asked about me. But somehow in our coupling I had changed my I to We. Years later when I found myself single again I had a lot of trouble reverting back to saying I. My instinct was to respond as though I was speaking for someone in addition to myself. I more I thought about it, the more I realized that when we answer for We we are saying something. Every word has meaning. So I did some research and in addition to discovering that people in Fiji have 6 distinct words for We I found some other interesting facts about a word that doesn't get much thought.

The Inclusive We: this is the one we use when the person is with us. So my Jen and I were going to lunch and someone asked where we were going and I said "oh We are going to lunch." It is inclusive because Jen was with me. This is the most common use of the word and honestly the one that is least interesting.

The Exclusive We: this is the one I use too much. When my mother asks how I am and I say "oh We are fine" and I include my fiance and son in that We, except they are not there with me, and in fact they may not be fine. I am simply speaking for them. I am removing their voice. We use this meaning all the time and perhaps should rethink it. We say it in the business world: "oh We would be happy to make those changes." When the person who has to make them wasn't even at the meeting. Or in our personal lives: "We are so happy for you." When we know our spouse doesn't care that our friend from college is getting married. It is an inauthentic use of the word, and provides us a great opportunity to continue to hide behind language.

The Royal We/The Editorial We: the Royal We apparently (thank you Wikipedia) has it roots from when kings would say We meaning: "God and I." It isn't used that way anymore and is now more often called the Editorial We. Used when one person is speaking for many. Think the exclusive We except instead of just talking about your spouse you are talking about an entire political party. This We puts people into the role of being a voice of the masses - it is probably less inauthentic then the exclusive we because people know that speakers are not in fact speaking on behalf of everyone - but its use still creates a feeling of urgency or importance that the word I would not create.

The Author's We: this is where we use We to refer to a generic third person. "When We mix yeast and warm water the yeast rises." It is essentially used to shorten a sentence, either written or stated, in replacement of the word "someone".

The Patronizing We: isn't this the best kind? "Did we walk the dog today?" "Did we forget to take out the trash?" We use it to draw attention to something we wanted someone else to do...and usually they didn't. It is a wonderfully passive aggressive way to bust someones balls.

The English language is a fascinating thing and even among native born speakers so much can be lost in translation. Did my mother notice that as my marriage collapsed "We" went from being "great" to "good" to "fine" to "busy"? What if I had been answering just for myself? Would I have answered differently then We did?

The categories of the word We noted above came from Wikipedia - the insight/ramblings about them, well that's all me :)

Thoughts in Motion

My commute to work has changed drastically, leaving me with 12 hours a week of time. Just time, while the world rushes past the train windows. I leave Portland so long before the sunrises that I am in a different state by the time it peaks red and orange and yellow above the farm land. I try not to see it as lost time. Try to maximize it. Reading, working, thinking. But it is that third that has gotten me hung up. Too much time with ones own mind is a dangerous thing. Is it scripture that says "idle hands are the devils work" or something like that? To me it is an idle mind.

So I try to capture the sense of calm and one day at a time attitude I so easily embraced in New Orleans. But it seems to slip away a little each day. I grind my teeth again, have migraines again, wish away entire weeks and then find myself on a train. With nothing but time. To think about what I've missed, what I've left behind and what is ahead. The train may be my embodiment of hell. Especially when the guy behind me won't stop singing along to his iPod.