Man oh man it's a wave. A wave of purposeless female self-discovery. I guess I sort of knew this was happening - I did see Eat Pray Love in the theater with two lady friends, after which we drank a lot of wine and giggled at the adorable waiter. And I saw Julia and Julie or whatever, and I just finished The Happiness Project. I get this, definitely. I get the idea of manufacturing purpose for yourself, any purpose, any regimen, any accountability to any idea at all to feel like it matters to exist. As much as we complain about our obligations in an "is it Friday yet" kind of way, just like we call our spouses various versions of "ball and chain," some kind of obligation is the one thing we all need to matter to ourselves. And here's what I think - there's nothing to do. There ARE no obligations. For most people in the Western world, that is. No one has to farm their food or cut wood for their house or pump their water or help raise a barn - not that we'd know what to do if it came down to it anyway. With some important exceptions (surgeons, fire fighters, etc) our accountability is reduced to half-human obligations involving cash registers, telephones, and paperwork, so that we can return to our heated, pre-built, packaged-food refrigeration-centers we call home. If we're lucky, there is someone equally dejected by their own purposelessness there to vaguely commiserate with or resent, depending on your level of social skill and luck; bonus points if you're both in reasonably good shape. Indoor soccer leagues, bowling nights, self-made folk recordings, whatever, are all ways to hobby ourselves out of the nothingness. But maybe I'm just sort of passionless, generally speaking. I know, I know, I really dig yoga but I'm just making some sweeping statements here. Plus I have this feeling that loving yoga is an over-the-counter life pill to take to numb the nothingness; I'm fine with that and do truly get a lot out of it, but still, I am mostly just holding the hem of something that doesn't seem to be thrashing and drowning quite as much as everything else around me.
Boy it's weird to be even peripherally a part of the current cliche - although my life won't be marketed to other miserable females to make them feel "not alone" and all that. Ha ha, there is a book to be written about this purposelessness and the marketed cures for female purposelessness - it's the second wave of The Feminine Mystique, for sure. So many women with so much misery and zero sense of direction - and so much education! What's happening here? Well I guess first of all education is a joke. That's another topic for another time. Bleh.
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