Morosophic Musings
All in Humanities
There’s a not-so-well-kept secret among socially conscious empaths. We don’t talk about it much, at least not in this capacity, because there’s usually so much joy in our passion—in our call for peace and justice. There is so much pure, unadulterated joy in the purposeful energy we put out into this world. But the truth is, the secret we empaths keep, is that every moment of our pursuit is marked by pain.
Aristotle said that in order to “live well” we had to make a plan. In fact, Aristotle expanded on a famous Socrates quote, “an unexamined life is not worth living,” with his own adage: the unplanned life is not worth examining. We have to commit to certain values we would like to live up to. These values can be as simple as: “practicing kindness” or as complex as “practicing forgiveness.”
In that moment, my heart shattered. I knew that my son was well aware of racism, seeing as how we had just gone through black history month and it was fresh on his mind. However, the book never, NOT ONCE, mentioned anything about race. That was something he inferred with his knowledge that there are disproportionate amounts of people of color living in poverty today, and that many people who "need help" are people of color.
But, here’s the thing.
None of us really, completely, fit in the spiritual boxes that have been created for us. There are always exceptions. There are Christians that march in Pride parades. Jews that eat bacon. Muslims that don’t do their required five Salats per day. Atheists that believe in ghosts!
With the exception of violent or otherwise harmful extremism, there is no wrong way to practice one’s chosen faith, spirituality, or lackthereof. But time after time, even when we are rejecting our previous beliefs, we create new spiritual boxes for ourselves, often times locking ourselves inside.
Living with an undiagnosed illness can feel like living two lives simultaneously. You can feel fine one week, day, or minute; and then the next week, day, or minute, you are completely disabled. What's worse, living with an undiagnosed illness can feel like you constantly have something to prove. You feel like you have to prove that you're strong enough to push through whatever it is, but you also feel like you have to prove that you are really ill. In a lot of ways, for me, living with an undiagnosed illness is like riding a bunch of carousels, each one unique only in the way my body responds.
So, yes, I do understand the older generation in their "well in my day" rhetoric, but as we have seen throughout history, it doesn't matter what a woman wears. A rapist will rape. A cat-caller will harass. Women have been getting raped since the dawn of time. They were raped in floor-length gowns that showed very little skin. They were (and still are) raped in full burkas. It does not matter what we wear. It never has.
"Mom" is not an identity. When there are billions of people with the exact same label, it can not define you as something special. Being a mother can make you feel special, but it does not make you unique in any way. Motherhood should never be your defining characteristic.
It should be fairly obvious by now that I am not a woman of religion. I don't subscribe to the promise of eternal life or find solace in the comfort of a large book with far too many negative attributes. I like science. I like science so much that I am writing a young adult novel just so I can get science (and progressive themes) into the hands of young people everywhere. I curl up to facts at night, and whisper sweet nothing into logic's ear before falling asleep. In short: I don't buy into mysticism, in whatever form or label it comes in and this has, at times, earned me the label of cynic, which is not only untrue, but unfair as well.
An opinion piece was published recently on the popular parenting website, Scary Mommy, in which the blogger shamed millennials about not wanting to have children. The article, entitled Millennials, Stop Whining and Go Have Babies, is roughly five-hundred words of pure, compost-loving, bullshit.
Working in combination with a particularly delicious red Zinfandel, my ignorance was violently thrown in my face the night of that moonrise. It was thrown, beaten, flogged, hanged, drawn, and quartered. I may be an intelligent woman, but holy fuck can I be stupid. My only consolation is knowing that I am not the only one who is utterly devoid of common sense in at least some way. Everyone has holes in their knowledge that beg to be filled up, (That sentence ended up somewhere different than where it started.) and that's alright. We can't all know everything.
