I haven't been able to write all of July and most of August, mainly because I decided not to make this a baby blog. I will only write about MY baby in facebook. However, this creates a problem: what to write when baby is all you think about?
Yesterday I thought once again about aging... The traumas and the joys. I'm not one of those who is worried about aging because it's cool to be young - it's not, in my mind. The older I get the less insecure, uncertain and, in some cases also, less unhappy I become. Compared with ages 25-28 I'm really happy right now. Still, sometimes you feel a moment of unease. I think it has got to do with what you've accomplished in life so far. We create expectations for us, about how life should be, and about what should be done by a certain age. And sometimes our social circles create those expectations - be the circles in a religious community (many expectations there! I'm not saying however that the religions create the expectations, I think it's really the community), academical circles (equally expecting really) or others. I remember feeling really worried when, at 30, I met a former classmate from Junior High, first time in many years. She had a house, a car, a career, a husband and children. I lived in a rental appartment, had no car (didn't really want a house or a car but still), had almost no career, just a job, and not even a boyfriend let alone a husband and children. I felt like at that age I should have at least something from the list.
A close person to me is having a 40-year crisis, mainly I think because her ambitions have not been fulfilled. With musical ambitions she realizes that she is getting too old to reach them. Some ambitions have a time limit, set by the society. You can't act the roles of young women after a certain age. You can't even become an actor...
How about me? Right now I'm pretty satisfied, having reached the one goal I had with a time limit (having a baby). There are others, but they can wait...
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Finnish-mormon-socialist-feminist-environmentalist-vegetarian-philosopher's theories of the week and rantings of the day. Be hereby warned.
I'm writing in English, which is strange in itself since I really love my own language, Finnish, and since I detest the power position that the English language has in global communucation... but I'd get way too many complaints from American friends if I didn't write in a language comprehensible to them.
I agree the tension we feel about aging is mostly due to expectations of where we would be. At least we have longer life expectancies than previous generations, so we can pack in a few extra things before we hit those time limits.
ReplyDeleteI'm just happy to see that I'm not the only one who has waited 'forever' to have a baby. Not that I have thought about that yet (baby) per se... but it comforts me that I'm not the only one who has waited a bit longer. The questions are getting a bit annoying as we've been married 5 years...
ReplyDeleteI suppose it depends on the company we're keeping. In church, surely you're bound to feel like you're doing something wrong if you're not married with kids at age 30. On the other hand in other places that's definitely not the case. For example whenever I tell people that I've been married for 12 years and have a school aged kid the next question often is: excuse me, but may I ask how old you are? Some have asked me if me and my hubby were high school sweethearts.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I might get flattered by this and think: "oh, how nice, everyone thinks I'm so much younger than I actually am", but even when I was at the hospital giving birth to my firstborn I felt I was sometimes treated as a teenage mum. I was 24 at the time, and the hospital staff knew it.
So you're not that different in that way after all, Tuittu. Apart from church, of course and if one is mostly associating with church members it's easy to see it from that point of view.
I, myself, was actually feeling pretty young when I attended the parents' night at my sons school. And when I thought of the fact that when he is 18, I'll be 42. So I'll have a grown up kid when some of my agegroup are still changing diapers! A strange thought, indeed.
When I first started working with disabled children, I had to rethink all my thoughts of expectations.
ReplyDeleteThe kids I work with are mostly autistic and often unable to speak at all, and they will never be able to live a life we would consider normal. My first reaction was a feeling of pity, as I thought of what they would miss. But soon I realized that it works the other way too: no-one expects anything from them. They do not live a life we have to live, where expectations of family, career, social circles etc. etc. are heaped on our shoulders. They are, actually, comparably free.
Why, then, do we keep ourselves trapped like we do? Why do we create expectations and think we should be able to achieve these things? Why do we compare ourselves to others and what they have achieved?