Ambitions Redefined
When I was seventeen my life ambitions were drastically different than they are today, in fact, my ambitions have continually evolved over the years from pretty outrageous to absolutely tame. Here's a sample of some of my youthful ambitions:- To be a concert pianist (9 years old)
- To be a soap opera writer (10 years old)
- To be a fashion designer (13 years old)
- To be a novelist (14 years old)
- To be dead (15 years old)
- To be a rich and famous fashion designer (17 years old)
- To be so rich and famous I practically rule the world (17 1/2 years old)
- To be a well respected poet (23 years old)
Obviously there are more. Obviously I am a person with a constant flow of ambitions. They change, they redesign themselves as I input information into the think-box from the life I'm currently living. The most constant ambitions have been to develop my writing skills into something worthy of respect, and to be a designer.
Funny things happen when you're open to life. I never had the ambition to be a housewife, but taking a month long hiatus from work for the first time in my adult life when I was twenty seven years old, just to be at home, transformed my ideas about what my home had to offer in terms of entertainment, skill development, and fulfillment. I went on to work at a bookstore for a year before finally chucking it in to be a housewife. It turned out to be the best job I ever had. Seriously. This was before having my baby. It's very respectable in society to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom, but to tell people you are a housewife carries with it a kind of conversation-killing curse. Curiously, it elicits a response in people similar to when you announce that someone has died.
I found myself especially disappointed in the response I got from women. It seemed that most of my acquaintances and even a few of my friends felt that being a housewife was a waste of my potential as a woman. Or that by choosing to stay home I was as good as chaining myself to my man's wall of masculine will. That somehow I was automatically saying goodbye to my own needs and desires. People you have just met are normally curious to know about what you do for a living and will ask questions about it. But I found that when I mentioned that I was a housewife I would get one of two responses: a) "But what else do you do?" or b) "Oh..." with a change of subject.
It made me angry that women were acting no better than misogynists in making so many assumptions about a woman's place in this world. Making so many value judgements on the choices other women make. It depressed me that women had come to a place where they didn't value some of the things that women have traditionally done, not because men have been holding the whip over us (because, if you're being honest, you will know that women are always the ones wearing the pants in a healthy home) but because we're naturally better at those things than men are. That's right. I'm here to say the taboo thing, go ahead and get the timber lit under the stake: women are usually better at keeping house than men are. Because we are generally better multi-taskers, better planners, better with time management, and better at most of the skills that go into keeping a home in shape.
I'm not saying that women aren't suited for a million other things, because all those same skills lend themselves to being CEOs of huge corporations, and to being entrepreneurs, I'm just saying that the reason women have been at the helm of homelife for so long (until the feminist revolution) is because we're better suited for the job than most men. (And please, let me just say here that I'm aware that there are men who have become the leaders of their homelife and are doing it as well or better than their women can. I'm just saying that most men are not naturally suited to the job.)
I was a housewife and stay-at-home-mom for seven years before I started my own company. What's interesting to me is that having been open to being a housewife, an ambition I never actually had, has shaped me, my interests, and my skills in such a way as to lead me to where I am today. To the new ambitions I have. If I hadn't been a housewife I wouldn't have developed a company that is more meaningful to me than being a fashion designer ever could be. A company that envelopes and celebrates so many of my skills and interests. That allows me to write, design, create, make cool things, be productive, and still be home for my child and my house.
Here are what my ambitions look like today:
- To have financial security
- For my business to become successful
- To see my son become a good man
- To stay married to Philip
- To turn my garden into a mini-farm
- To preserve enough food to get through the winter (wouldn't that be too cool?)
- To grow enough food to not have to buy any for a whole summer
- To become a housewife again
I think every young girl should be taught to be self sufficient, to go out in the world and take care of herself. All women should be able to build a wonderful life for themselves that doesn't depend on having a man. But when a woman knows her own self worth, when she is an independent spirit, when she is a strong force of her own making, she ought to be able to choose whatever life makes her most content. Whichever road quenches the thirst of her ambitions. She should feel free to explore the world and it's offerings with an open mind and heart. And if in the end what she really wants is to shack up with a good guy and be the lady at the helm of a life they are creating together, why shouldn't she? And why shouldn't we all admire her ambitions to define herself not by the money she's bringing in, but by the quality of life she's creating for herself and her family?