(What) To Do (?)

One of my ex-boyfriends puts together, each year, a list of lists—the end of year list as commentary on the art of listing. I suppose the idea is that these lists can tell us something about who we were, who we are, or who we want to be. To be honest, like LLL, I’m not one for these yearly recountings and remembrances of things past, but I’ve got to admit to a peculiar fondness for the forward-looking list, particularly the infamous to-do list. This is not because I believe in progress: I believe in the notion of looking forward just about as much as I believe in the notion of looking back. But, as someone I know and love used to remind me, that won’t stop those looks (which here generate some semblance of linear time) from believing in me.

When I was home for the holidays, I had a conversation with my youngest sister about her intense desire to become a mother, and right quick. As someone who has never wanted to be a mother, this desire is both fascinating and puzzling to me. So I asked her: why do you want this so badly right now? What she told me surprised me. She said she’d accomplished what she wanted to accomplish in the current phase of her life, and she is ready to move on to the next stage. This surprised me because I don’t think life this way: in stages. I think it as something more akin to an endless circling and repetition, with an intense occupation of the moment that I’m in. This doesn’t mean I don’t believe in change. It just means I also believe in some kind of constancy—something shining and eternal. Maybe it means I believe in love.

The conversation with my sister reminded me of why I believe so thoroughly in conversation, in the need to really engage with one another, ask each other difficult questions, care so profoundly about the answers. The moments that we occupy, at whatever degree of intensity, are certainly informed by what we learn about ourselves, and one another, through these conversations. So it proves possible to believe in fully inhabiting the present all the while still believing in change, agreeing with Emerson’s contention that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

We grow, we change, and yet, in each moment, we deeply and abidingly are. The question for this blog, I suppose, is: how can we employ conversation to grow and change in more meaningful and honest ways? And, perhaps more specifically: how can we, how must we, address gender as part of this growth and change? Which brings me back to my sister. I am in no way critical of her desire to be a mother. I believe she’ll be a kind and generous parent, and learn much about herself along the way. But I do wonder why the best we can do, in so many of our conversations, is to invoke conventional notions of what it means to proceed through life: stage one, stage two, stage three, and on and on unto the final stage, the one we must not discuss at all, conventionally or otherwise. Add minor variations for gender, race, and mix well. Instant recipe for life. Just add eggs. I don’t believe my sister gave me the whole answer when she told me she was ready for the next stage. Her desire is too deep, her need too pronounced, for this to be all.

I’ll keep talking with my sister about this, because I love her and I really want to know her better. I’ll keep talking with her because, through our conversations, hopefully we’ll both learn something about ourselves, about our relationship, about our world. I’ll keep talking with her because I want each instant of my life to be full of possibility, and conversations are the only way I know to create such possibility. I suppose this is what I love about the to-do-list: the possibility that I may, still, be becoming the person I want to be. That there is hope. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the next day. The to-do-list is the conversation you have with yourself about your hopes and your fears. It’s a space for bearing the soul. So, as the new year begins to unwind, I think about my list. To do: keep talking, keep listening, keep hoping.

Holla Back?

I am not much interested in end of decade lists. The best film, book, science project, these I find boring and somehow too entrenched in the commercial culture to be interesting. Scanning them as they popped up in periodicals and blogs weeks before the end of 2009 my mind wandered and I gave over to reverie.

When I was young I daydreamed what the world would be like at the turn of the century. I knew that I would be alarmingly old by the year 2000 (48, which in itself staggered my imagination) but I knew that I would live to see a brand new world.

Okay, maybe I was a silly child, but I thought by this time we would have developed cities with the kinds of infrastructure that made life wonderful. The buildings would allow for sunlight, warmth, community, safety, and beauty. The old artfully created buildings would be kept up well and cared for so that new could live along with old peacefully and respectfully. I told you I was most likely a silly child.

I thought our methods of travel would be faster, cleaner, plentiful. I thought that mass transit would be the wave of the future as vehicles plodding along with one occupant could not nearly keep up with trackless, incredibly fast trains (yes, I got this idea from a film). There would even be space travel and space cities. Most of all there would be harmony. I thought that the people of Earth were going to advance so much that the need for war would no longer exist. We would live longer and better through amazing advances in medicine and we would appreciate life around us.

Today, of course we know that the one thing that has really shown a startling advance in the 21st century is communications. I don’t even have to enumerate the changes here. Maybe I am a silly adult, but I think with all the advancements we might be using them better. I am impressed with how much networking tools are used to connect people with struggles going on around the world. In Iran, we can see the news that is not allowed to be transmitted. In Myanmar we heard and saw the reality of the resistance. This I believe is important. For the most part though it appears that most of these tools are being used for not very interesting communications. Facebook sells us many things: one another, friendship (makes us friends or not) starts or ends careers, and sometimes lives.

I do not participate in these social networking systems. I did not care to be part of the Myspace community (and it appears not many do anymore) or Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all the new ones that I cannot keep up with. The thing is I am not sure that these tools are creating any deeper, richer, or more meaningful connections than before. However, the blog idea appealed to me because it can provide some of what I have been searching for now for some time.

What I have been looking for is the kind of discussion (sometimes outright heated arguments that included violence to cups, saucers, tables and astoundingly books(unfortunately thrown across rooms in the passion of the debate)) that I once overheard and later participated in in cafes, and coffee shops.

Obviously, not all blogs are alike, and we don’t care for or find interest in all or many of them. But they do create discussion, and I do get to see part of life that I otherwise might not. I can interact and comment and discuss. This is important for me, especially in this new century. I want to know how we are all doing, and of course for me, I want to know how the women are doing.

What is the point of this post? Not to discuss the current culture exactly, but to help me locate (there I go again) myself at 57 in this not so brave new world.

So this is a call to comment to connect, perhaps to write, here. You need to want to be naked, despite how scary that may be. This is the other compelling benefit of this new world. We can be as anonymous as we need to be and still be part of the conversation.