Listening to right now: Niyaz, The HuntToday's Happiness Formula: A trip to the Co-op to get ingredients for an extra yummy dinner; I'll let the produce section tell me what to make, but it has to be worthy of the excellent petite sirah that is sitting on the counter!Following My Bliss By: I cannot seem to get back to a daily yoga practice. I think this happens every spring because the gardens beckon. But yoga is important -- and more than just exercise, so I am determined...If you have never read Carolyn G. Heilbrun's
Writing a Woman's Life, you should. And you should especially read it
if you want to write or paint or be more creative or find more meaning in your life...which, I guess, means you should just
read it.
By googling Carolyn G. Heilbrun to create a relevant link in this post, I discovered that she committed suicide last October.
I am especially disturbed, because, apparently, she did this
not due to depression or illness, but because she thought her life had been good enough and long enough (she was 77). It's called "rational suicide" or "balance sheet suicide" and is a term from a century or more ago. She had been open with friends and family for about a decade that she would be, at some point, making this "choice."
I am disturbed on so many levels.
It is the point of her book taken to an extreme that is unimaginable to me. What of our end? Is there not, perhaps,
some point to it? Some point to our not controlling it?
Though
we can, and must, choose the narrative arc of our own story, I do not think we are meant to know how it all turns out, because we are not only the writer but we are also the main character and
our story is intertwined with others' stories and there are events that will happen that we can, in no way, plot for ourselves; it is the ride that matters, is it not?
Here's the quote I wanted to start with:
(She is speaking of The Scarlet Letter and O Pioneers! but I would also add
The Awakening by
Kate Chopin.)
"In both of these novels, the woman had lived through her special destiny
but left no path behind her for future women, had lived with no community of women, no sense of bonding with other women. Not only had these women
no stories other than their refusal of the plot in which most women lived, and no women with whom to talk of what they had themselves learned, but they would have been hard put to answer the inevitable question asked of unhappy women:
What do you want?" (Emphasis my own)
By killing herself at the age of 77, Heilbrun was certainly taking on a culturally-created plot (rather than writing her own) that women, especially
women, have no value after a certain age, have nothing to contribute. She was concerned she would
become ill and then become a burden...again taking on the plot that says if you are old or sick, there is no point to you.
I strongly disagree.I know people living with very ill loved ones -- young, ill loved ones -- and I know they would not exchange a moment of the time they are having with that person. And I know,
deeply know, that one day they will speak of all they have learned by going through this. And I know those who are sick are also learning, seeing life anew, having experiences they would have never had because
now they are willing to take risks that before they were just putting off.
In a novel, suicide is a metaphor, but Heilbrun seemed to have confused real life with literature. A danger, to be sure, for people who live too much in their heads.
I know -- from personal experience. It is always a
red flag if I am reading constantly, eating through one book after another, that I am not fulfilling my own intellectual, creative, or spiritual needs in some way.
As Heilbrun says at the end of this lovely, little book:
"Women...who found their way to a meaningful life
identified daydreaming as a sign of their meaningless lives and the only consolation for them."
I used to daydream all day long...and then I met my partner and she pushed me to write my own life, to make my own choices about who I was and who I wanted to be, not to accept the stories pushed upon me.
I no longer daydream, except at that healthy, occasional level. I use my imagination for my work
and I live the life that at one point I thought I could only have in dreams.As Heilbrun asks, "
What do you want?" Does that question make your heart flutter?
Or have you already answered it and are living it day by day, curious about how it will all turn out but enjoying every moment of the ride and
willing to be a little surprised?
