Single, no kids…

“What do you mean, you don’t have kids?  Why not?”  I wish I had a dime for every time a variation of this has been asked of me.

I don’t know how free people feel to ask this of men, I have never been a man.  I only know what my experience is.  When you are a woman and you don’t have kids, you are the weirdo. Everyone asks. Total strangers.  People on buses and planes and in coffee shops.

This starts with girls at a young age.  If you have kids with you and are out and about—perhaps you have a small cousin you are babysitting and you make a run to the grocery store, for example– people feel free to ask if they are yours.  Even if you are a teenager.  Even, sometimes if an older woman is near you who IS their mother.

People see having kids as a natural progression, integral to one’s being on this planet.

Anyone who has been engaged or lived with someone of the opposite sex can probably bear witness to the onset of the questions.

But us childless folk tend to have a tribe.  I have had a lot of childless friends over the years.  We tend to find one another.  I can tell you why and how many people end up without children.

A few friends married men who didn’t want children.  They were told by many of their well-meaning older relatives (always eager to get young people hitched) that the groom would “change his mind” after they got married.  And yet, the grooms didn’t. Ever.  When faced with the prospect of ending the marriage or continuing as a childless couple, they chose to stay married.

Some of them can’t have children.  Through a whim of biology and chance.  If you don’t have the funds, don’t have the latitude to take time off work for exams and appointments, and also the patience for a battery of fertility treatments and so forth, you don’t have much choice.

Some of them decided against having children for themselves.  Reasons of personal preference or

And then, there are those other of us like me.

Those of us who never wanted to have kids alone, who feared poverty, and were extra-super-careful, choosing partners and protection wisely just like your sex-ed teacher taught you. Those of us who were trying so hard to do it the right way that the opportunity, as people are ready to remind us, is disappearing day by day.

Some of us come from backgrounds where pregnancy outside of marriage is met with disdain so great as to have created the choice for us.  The choice between having a child or having contact with our parents.  The choice between falling into the pattern of “fallen, but repentant” or “old maid”, if a proposal or wedding never managed to appear.  Perhaps there were proposals, but because life happens, they never managed to come to fruition.  Because people are imperfect and imperfect, non-fairy-tale things happen all the time.

Perhaps a lot of the men we knew were losers and we had little in common with them when it came to the ideas they shared about raising children, so that co-parenting with them would have been an ongoing stressful disaster.

Perhaps they have a psychological disorder that would make life hell for children, and they do not wish to visit that upon them.

Perhaps they come from abusive backgrounds and do not have the funds to leave their immediate area, but do not wish to expose their children to their abusers.

Perhaps we, or our families, were the “weird ones” in the community.  The only Jewish person for 10,000 miles.  The only Wiccan.  The only punk.  The only goth.  The family that wasn’t “good enough” because you didn’t have brand-name clothes.  The girl who was too smart or too poor or too much in the wrong political party.  Socially speaking, nothing succeeds quite like sameness.

You are going to say, “Well, just meet someone online!”  Look, I am 41.  I still think of internet dating as scary and weird.  In 1994, I was 18.  There was no internet dating.  People dated who was around.  Available.  There.  Matches were often simply made by default, especially if you didn’t have the funds to move to another area to get to know people or drive around to date in another area. I took someone from out of my usual social circle to my senior prom.  The question everyone wanted to know, in very rude tones, mind you, was “how do you two even know each other?” Because that was not a thing that happened, certainly not in a small town.  What do the people do who live in areas that don’t have good or affordable internet service do now? I would assume it is the same thing.  

What women learn in this process is that having children is paramount in terms of how others view them.

Even if the decision to not have children was not an intentional one, but simply the way life worked out between following the AIDS-scare-era rules of safe sex, a few failed proposals, and never quite having the kind of job to make enough money to make pregnancy a reasonable option.

Women without children get portrayed as unfulfilled, cold, sometimes even sexually frigid, but above all things, selfish.

Selfish.

There are a couple ideas bound up in that.  First, there is an idea that you owe the world children.  You owe it to other people – family, friends, the universe, God—to produce children. Not adopt them, oh heavens no, that is failure.  So is having a surrogate.  They must be a production of your own.  You owe it to society to create children within yourself with the partner that your chunk of society has deemed acceptable.

The second idea that is a little further out there is that you are selfish for not sharing your home with a child that you pop out of your own body.  Not the selfishness of not sharing your home with child who is already here, oh heaves no, you are selfish for not creating something to share your life with in order to share your life with it.  As if there were babies in heaven waiting on a couple to be unselfish enough to give birth and produce them. Like a giant baby soul breeding factory in heaven, popping out baby souls waiting for homes on earth.

It doesn’t matter what else you are doing with your life.   You could be creating wells in dry areas of distressed countries.  You could be feeding the homeless.  You could be curing diseases.  The fact of your childlessness makes you selfish.  And to some, removes your worth.

We get asked who will take care of us when we get old.

I don’t have the answer for that.  However, in every generation before this, plenty of women left this earth without having children.  They managed to get by somehow.  In previous generations, the governesses and the nannies may have never had children because of the complexity of their station.  Stories like Jane Eyre talk about the way the governess is not a part of the upper class, not a part of the lower class, and is almost without a social stratum to belong to.  Religious adherents of different kinds didn’t have children.  There will always be people, no matter how lovely and bright and kind, will leave this earth without having created offspring.  That is just a reality of living life according to the multitude of social rules that we have created for ourselves over time.  When you combine that with biology and the slim chance of getting pregnant each time a person has sex, the variations in fertility among people, you are going to end up with a statistically significant portion of the population that manages to just not reproduce.

I think a few things have led to this current cultural mentality.  I could postulate on that and might at another time.  We decided at some point that being the one to not have kids was something that other people had the right—perhaps even the duty—to weigh in on.  I’ve known my pregnant friends to gnash their teeth at the latitude people seem to show over commenting on and touching their bodies.  While not the same thing, society seems to feel it is owed something from those of us, regardless of circumstance, that never checked “have kids” off the list.

The very people who will tell you that you shouldn’t have kids if you can’t afford them, will later despise you for never having those kids you couldn’t afford.  Because your life was supposed to fall into a pattern that they recognized, and you failed at making that a reality for them.

Sameness is what they want.  That is why they react badly to Halle Berry having children at 47 instead of 23.  That is why they react badly to people having more than exactly two children (not one, that will never do! You have to have two!)  The people who comment on whether you have children or not are not interested in your happiness.  They are disappointed that you didn’t choose the same path that they did.  Because people love love love sameness.

Rambling about Escapism

Is our culture too invested in escapism?

We have TV everywhere and Netflix and video games and phones.

We are connected all the time.

We can have 650 “Friends” on Facebook and never have met any of them at all in real life.

We binge watch whole seasons of shows on weekends.

We have IMAX theaters where were can fully immerse ourselves in the story.  I remember my first experience with IMAX.  I was in Texas and it was this history film somewhere near the Alamo.  I wasn’t at all sure what I thought about it.  I’m still not sure.

Are we leaving reality behind too much?  Are we escaping so much that we fail to face the blunt force trauma of our own reality?

Do we need to unplug and relish the harshness of life’s cruel bends and clearly face them and solve them, or let them beat us down if that is what Fate has determined must happen?

In all the connectivity, do we grow?  Do we grow in the ways we should grow?  Do we absorb too much the tied-up-in-a-bow tropes and predictable storylines, expecting one day, that things will just “work out” for us, without applying any elbow grease?

Do we live in a world in our head that is almost reality- but not quite, because reality can suck and we don’t want to be there?  Do we let our problems sit, unsolved, unaddressed, un-felt?

Are we stopping ourselves from accepting uncomfortable truths about the lives we live and instead zoning out into something we find pleasant in order to hide?  Do we use these things to abdicate our own responsibility for our choices?

Is it fair to ourselves to hide from a rude or harsh thing that fate has dealt us, if indeed that is the case?  It is better to fall in and embrace the darkness of that fate, rather than create for ourselves a distraction?

I’ve found myself pointlessly watching “The Golden Girls” of late.  While I do laugh occasionally, I sit and wonder to myself at the plotlines.  Am I to believe that women in this age bracket are having relationship and friendship problems that a 14-year-old could clear up for them?  Or even a person much younger?

So why keep watching?  Is there a point?

Why do we watch things just to watch them?  Just to have the noise in the house, the pretend familiarity and warmth?  The illusion of people that are ultimately always safe and who never could actually do any harm to us?

None of us knows how to live a life.  Some of us flounder around trying.  Always attempting to figure it out.  Some people really try.  Some people never seem to care much, and come into this world sitting on a stump with a motionless face and go out the same way.  TV never seems to help much.  Unless you happen to run into some situation involving a comic misunderstanding with characters who only have a few dimensions.

That is where TV also gets us:

We think of people incorrectly, and people portray themselves almost as caricatures. Only a list of qualities based on stock roles.  We lose our complexity.  We fail to see the complexity in others.  We sell ourselves short on experiences and possibilities because of what we believe is fitting for us and who we determine we are.   We define ourselves by music preference and subculture and religion (sometimes as all three at once—as I mentioned in the previous post, everyone I meet thinks that because I am white I am also Christian, Republican, and listen to country music a lot.)

Some people may only be three things.  Maybe they aren’t multi-dimensional.  But maybe it’s because they never gave themselves the chance to be, creating walls of what must be, walls that would never let them change the dial from the country music station to the college amateur DJ hour.

Some of us fools do reach up and twist the knob.

Some of us do eventually turn off the TV and listen to the quiet and cry about our lives and thank our lucky stars for the good things while wondering still why we got passed over for some, and know that living our best lives means we may not ever have everything, but we give it a damn good try as much as we can.  Some of us do hit every station in the market.  Read books on the gods of every religion, and try dancing to alien beats. Some of us grab different wine bottles every time we are in the store just to see how different they taste.  We try the funny-looking appetizers and new fusion cuisine just to give it a shot.  We go to a restaurant without anyone having recommended it to us or looking up reviews, because, if it’s awful, at least we’ll have a story to tell.

Some of us fools allow ourselves to feel out of step with our surroundings.  To feel the discomfort. To realize that some things were our fault, but some things were dumb luck and out of our control.  That trope that hurts the most—the inability to make the magic-30-minute-resolution happen because you did the right things.

At the end, we, the oddballs, drink our totally random wine, sit outside on the steps and hope that maybe somehow, we are gaining wisdom in all our folly.   That we will have enough of wisdom to really feel different one day, but perhaps, that is an illusion too.

The fictional idea I find affects me the most is the “getting it right” idea.  The idea that we will cross a finish line and not make any further bad choices, mistakes, never have a thought come out of our mouth holding the wrong words… that we will somehow one day get everything right.  Our job will never disappear and our stock picks will only go up and we won’t forget we left something in the oven ever again.   Our skin cream will be affordable and eliminate pimples and wrinkles, all our plants will bloom and we will eat a proper diet and somehow extend the daylight hours in a manner that allows us to do it all and tie each day up neat and complete.

Even though I know is absurd, it affects me.  Something about the idea managed to wriggle its way into my brain, past all the TV and movie absurdities about love and heroics and success. This is the part that got through. Getting my choices right.  Staying on top of everything.  Although I know that no one keeps all the plates in the air all the time… I still think sometimes…. That if I could… I would break through to something else.

But there is nothing else.  This is my life.  And I’m living it.  This is it.  All there is.

None of us has the faintest clue what we are doing.

Circling the Bowl

Why do people argue the unresolvable?

Why?

Why can’t people admit that they are on different ground rather the same and just be okay with it?

I’m talking specifically about the arguments I observe (as opposed to participate in) over religion.   People push one set of values presented in a religion over another and the comment thread or discussion goes on and on and no resolution is ever reached, just endless cycles of blah-de-blah-blah about what someone should believe but it also says this other thing that another person thinks is “more equal” in the religious viewpoint.  You aren’t a REAL  (insert religion here) unless you believe THIS.  Then someone else chimes in and

People push one set of values presented in a religion over another and the comment thread or discussion goes on and on and no resolution is ever reached, just endless cycles of blah-de-blah-blah about what someone should believe but it also says this other thing that another person thinks is “more equal” in the religious viewpoint.

Maybe you aren’t the same religion after all.   Why is that hard to accept about one another rather than arguing a theological debate? Why do you feel an obligation to justify yourselves to one another?

Why?  Why spend time on it?

There are people who are in love with religion for its ability to bring judgment. There are people who are in love with religion because it might bring order to the universe, they tend to like having rules dictated to them, even if those rules hurt them personally.  There are people who are in love with religion because they think of it in a lovey-happy way– people who espouse the ideas of mercy and forgiveness and ideal, eternal love.

These people are different people.  They believe different things.  No matter what religion you are in, these people are going to have a different set of beliefs.  If they had been raised in a different culture, the temperature of their religious belief would largely be unchanged. They are, in a way, worshipping something inherently different within the religion, and will find a different set of outcomes rewarding to their sense of spirituality.  You can argue each other’s wrongness into the ground or next Tuesday but it won’t actually change anyone’s mind and it won’t matter to them.  They will keep justifying whatever it is to themselves anyway.
I vote everyone stops.
I am going to suggest a new tactic for comment sections and family reunions the world over.

Stop.  Just stop.  Put a stop to wasting your precious time and frazzling your mind over it and finding justifications for this beleif and that one.
Regardless of what religion you participate in, how different would your life be, if—
Instead of saying “Yes, I believe this, but my interpretation…” or “What that really means in the original language is.. “ – what if, instead you just looked someone in the eye and casually said,

“Yeah.  No.  I don’t believe that part.  I believe parts X-Y.  Can you pass the Ketchup?”

Can you imagine the reaction if you chose to opt out of the discussion instead of launching into a black hole of endless unresolved debate on your opinions of theology or the verb endings of languages you have never personally studied?   Wouldn’t that make life BETTER?  Just to stop?

Wouldn’t it be better not to discuss what a REEAAAALLLY REAL  (fill in the blank) believes?
Why can’t that be the answer?  Why shouldn’t it be?

You don’t owe anyone an explanation for your thought processes.  Not a single person.  They don’t owe you an explanation for theirs.  The problem is the endless justifying and verse-grabbing and historical veracity ad nauseum, because it is eating up precious seconds of your life without an end in sight.

You can pick and choose what you want to believe.  You can tell people to screw off if they don’t like it.  But that requires you owning what you actually believe.  You have to stop saying, “I know its wrong  buuuuuuuutttttt…. ” and just own that you don’t actually believe that bit of something.  It requires you to stop finding some vague verb tense only 3% of people majoring in dead and nearly -dead languages to determine what it “really means”.   It requires you to say, “I believe in the ten commandments, but I gotta tell you, I think the beatitudes are hogwash.  That hippie love crap is just annoying.”  Or the reverse.  Whatever is true for you. Own your current reality based on your actual life.

I’m telling you- go ahead.  It’s okay.  I don’t care if you do.  But you all need to start owning where you are and being honest with yourself. All you are doing otherwise is spending giant chunks of your life arguing over something you can’t resolve.  Who on earth would ever want to do that?  Why?

And who are you trying so hard to convince with that smidgen of information or vehement insistence?   Yourself?  If you have to fight that hard to justify something, no matter what it is, that’s usually a sign of a problem.

Is it hard to own your own mind?

Are we scared to know that instead of a few value systems there are infinite value systems, one per person, and we cannot legislate the mind?
Try it.  I dare you, religious peeps of various types—when someone gets all whatever and starts telling you what you believe,  what this book says or that, respond with, “Yeah, I don’t believe that part.”  even if you do. Take a look at their reaction.  Savor the moment you decided other people’s demands on your spirituality no longer were a thing for you.
What if, the next time someone tells you that you aren’t a “real (fill in the blank),” instead of getting angry or self-defensive– you just say, “yeah, I know” very nonchalantly and punctuate it by walking off to buy ice cream?

Endless debates on where the emphasis in religions should fall are a waste of your precious years on this earth. Time you can NEVER GET BACK. EVER.  When the time is gone, it is GONE.  GONE GONE.  Time you could have spent watching the sunset.  Remembering the names of the constellations overhead.  Feeling a summer breeze. Making snowmen.

Life is short.  Too short.  Don’t waste it debating the unresolvable just because you think you must.   Definitely, don’t do it because some clown is demanding answers out of you.  Your life isn’t about everyone’ else’s opinion.  It’s far too short to be.