Lock in and let go

I'm not a Celebrity Cult kind of person, but I was really struck by this interview when I caught it on NPR this morning.

"Lock in and let go" seems to be good advice for lots of things, not just acting and riding cutting horses.

Thursday reading

There's a new report out from Pew Research on singleness, marriage, education, and economics in America, if you're in interested in that kind of thing.

A few particularly relevant findings for this blog and its (two) readers:

• "Today’s young adults are slow to tie the knot, and a rising share may end up not getting married at all." 
• "For young adults who want to get married, financial security is a significant hurdle."
• "Among never-married young adults with post-graduate degrees, women outnumber men by a large margin." [No surprise there, sez I.]

Do read it all.

For the first day of the semester

A useful reminder: students want professors who challenge them and care about them.

A call to arms: teachers need to shape the discussion about education reform.

A soundtrack: something to hum on your way to class.

"Wisdom about love is not limited to those blessed with partners."

Sara Eckel does it again.  Read it all.

Things you should read this week

(In order of priority)

The Washington Post on the backlog in processing evidence of sexual assault.

Then, on a lighter note:

The Dissolve on female characters in movies.

First Things on Not-A-Dates.

John Steinbeck on love

From a 1958 letter to his oldest son.  

"There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had."

International Women's Day

Thoughts on International Women's Day from Friend Of This Blog C:

May we one day not only hold half the sky, but half the wealth, the board room jobs, the parliamentary seats... and hold only half the violence statistics.
 

What you should read this week

Sara Eckel describes The Hard-Won Lessons of the Solitary Years and answers the question of why you're still single.

Mary Beard addresses the silence and silencing of women in public discourse.

And Stephanie Pappas examines a study that suggests marriage is better than cohabitation.

One thing to tell your single friend

Not sure I'm totally persuaded, but it's interesting, at least: 

"If you have a friend who is single and is motivated not to be, there is one thing to tell them that is actually helpful and it is this: 'I am going to work hard to try and find someone for you.' Dolling out insight is easy, taking action is hard." 

Read it all.

Worth keeping in mind

"Don't marry anyone who's not thrilled when you're simply being yourself."

--the inimitable Carolyn Hax

Some good advice

"The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth." -- Dorothy L. Sayers

Working on numbers one and two.  No sign of number three, but a girl can dream...

Feminism and The West Wing

So, I began watching The West Wing for the first time about a week ago.  I'm already halfway through season three.

I am a woman obsessed. Bewitched, ensorcelled, enthralled, intrigued, and kicking myself for being 10 years behind the curve.  It's the only show I've ever watched that makes me feel smarter afterwards.

You're thinking, "E, that's great and all, and charmingly dorky of you...but what's it got to do with BtheB?"

Well, let me tell you. Or rather show you.  Last night at an ungodly hour which I will not disclose for fear of prodigious judgment, I was watching an episode in which a fascinating interchange about feminism takes place.  It blew my mind a little bit.

Here are the relevant scenes (Season 3 Ep 14, "Night Five"):

Earlier in the season, Ainsley shocked Sam to the core by revealing that she is, as a prominent feminist, against the Equal Rights Amendment. Her argument is simple: equal rights are already guaranteed to all US citizens under the Constitution, so not only is the EPA superfluous (and therefore odious to hardcore Republicans like herself), but it implies that women are some special outlying category of person not already protected by the Constitution.  Thus the EPA, through its very existence, acknowledges and enforces the inequality it aims to correct.

The statement about feminism Hayes makes in the above clip got me thinking along similar lines.  Am I, in stewing over and blogging about and frequently bending ears concerning minor instances of discrimination, distracting others and myself from legitimate causes?  By bringing so many problems of varying degree into the fold, are we making things too diffuse? Am I missing the point of the whole revolution?

I want to say more on this, and think more on this.  Yes, there is a time and a place for venting the kinds of frustration encountered in our odd little demographic of single Christian women in academia. But there are also issues we have the power and the responsibility to give voice and weighty thought to -- to speak and teach and even proselytize about, and which extend far beyond the stuff of our privileged worldview.

The Passing of a Poet

I cried when I saw that Seamus Heaney had died on Friday, tears that were some mix of love of the beauty of his poems, gratitude for the sound of line from a sonnet that caught my imagination as an undergraduate, and a deep sense of loss for all the poems that will never be written now.

And then I read this and just about cried again.  The idea of a poet texting Latin to his wife makes my heart leap.

Noli timere. 

Don't be afraid. 

Heh heh

From my favorite cartoonist.

That's about where we are today, folks.  Although Wendy's got a great conversation going on the question "is singleness a choice?" over here.

Tootsie: More than Just a Pretty Face

Today on Facebook a friend posted this 3-ish minute video of Dustin Hoffman, an actor I love, discussing a deep insight about women he had while getting ready for one of his greatest roles, Tootsie.

Go here to watch it, then come back and share your thoughts.

Joni + Diana

A little music for your Tuesday: 

A real béguine

There's a marvelous obituary in The Economist for Marcella Pattyn, the last living béguine, who died April 14 at age 92.

Read it all.

Between hookups and courtship

So there's a recent piece over at The New York Times describing the end of courtship.  And actually, I say three cheers to that.  Courtship is not my scene.  I do not want you to call my father to ask his permission to take me out, I do not think that a cup of coffee = an implicit marriage proposal, I like issuing invitations and don't feel like you need to pay for me all the time.  And I will leave for another time all the invective I have prepared against a Certain Book which, I'm pretty sure, helped screw up normalized male/female relationships for the entire generation of people who went through youth group when I did.

But the hook-up culture described by the Times is just utterly disheartening and a very depressing alternative.  Loads of people whose fingers never leave their smartphones, who don't know how to have a conversation, who take what a friend once called the "carpet-bombing approach" to online dating: contact a whole bunch of people and hope somebody says yes.

It's not even the hooking-up part that I find distressing -- I just give that the mental flip-off and move right along -- but it's the haphazard, sloppy, informality.  I like hanging out.  I do.  I like hanging out in groups.  I like spontaneity.  But I also like feeling like a person, a living, thinking, feeling creature, not something to mitigate boredom or to fill space.  What about showing some basic courtesy to the people with whom you're spending time?

So really, I'd like to bring back dating.  Not in an artificially stiff way, but how about something like this:  He calls me several days in advance.  He asks if I'd like to go to a concert/have a glass of wine/meet for brunch.  I say yes.  We both wear real clothes, not pajamas masquerading as clothes.  We go.  We have engaging, funny, sparkling conversation, and the concert/wine/brunch is good.  We listen to each other.  He is not rude, and I am not prickly.  I offer to buy, but he does.  I say thank you sincerely, because I actually have had a lovely time.  He gives me a hug/kiss on the cheek and walks me to my car, because the town I live in can be rough at night, and he knows that.  Maybe he asks me out again, or maybe I ask him out.  Or maybe we don't go out again.  But that's ok, because we had a nice time, and it's only a glass of wine.  This does not seem like a lot to ask, but if the Times is right, it's profoundly counter-cultural.  It certainly feels that way.

Life on a Mobius Strip

The Moth takes on academics and relationships: 

(I know, you're thinking, "I don't have seventeen minutes for this!" Yes, yes, you do.  Many thanks to the Friends Of This Blog LivanDan for first introducing me to this story on a golden day in October.)

What does that MEAN?

The other morning I was working from home and so had the rare fortune of being on Skype at the same time as my college buddy E-Dubs, back in the States. As always, conversation was both edifying and ridiculous. Love that girl.

One of the things we talked about was the idea of "living fully". You can insert modifiers of any sort you wish: living fully... as a mother, as an atheist, as a divorcee, as a Christian, as an adjunct prof, as a single adult, as one of those first-time-on-the-job-market-and-I-want-to-plunge-myself-into-a-deep-dark-bottomless-pit people (for which, THIS).

Part of this blog's quest is to figure out what it means to live fully as a single, and as we talked I realized I thought it meant, in some measure, "being at peace". But E-Dubs reminded me that that can't be it, in part because as a Christian a full life must somehow be reminiscent of the life of Christ, yet Christ himself lived a life of sorrow, of solitude (both sought and unsought for), of frustration at the myopic lives of his closest friends--the men and the women who were his disciples.

Anyway, we all know to be wary of the Grass is Always Greener: I'll be at peace when___ (I get tenure, I have a husband, I have a good job, I own a house, I learn how to cook a decent risotto, When Christ Comes Again To Earth, etc.). That's no good, yet it's not bad to live in hope of those things. (Here's me whipping out the theology: it's about learning to live fully in the midst of eschatological tension--the historical era between Christ's first coming (hurrah for Christmas!) and his second).

So here's the question for discussion. If "being a peace" has less to do with living fully, then what DOES? What does that phrase really mean, anyway? And what if you just..aren't...getting...there (whereever "there" is)?

Help a sister out; tell me what it means, in some small way, for us to live fully.

(Note: you may now leave comments anonymously on this blog-- this is to encourage more dialogue)