DON’T WANT TO ‘HAVE IT ALL..!!’

            It was a beautiful evening. I was reading “Einstein- The Life and Times”, by Ronald W. Clark. I had all I needed… an armchair, a book and a cup of coffee. It was the moment I received a message from one of my friends and I lost my peace.

What was the message? 

     It was an emotional piece about the separation of a husband and a wife. After separation, the husband decides to sell the home which possessed the memories of their life together. His wife’s father buys it and handover the key to the husband back,with an advice;

          

“You are an instinctive decision maker.You married my daughter and now you are selling this house without much thought. Empty house speaks louder. If you ever regret your decision, come and get her, otherwise you can return the keys.” 

     

The husband starts spending some evenings in the empty house. Slowly the emptiness fills him. He looks at the hanging calendar on the wall, wherein she has noted the chores to be done like dates for different bill payments, milkman’s bill, maid’s payment, dates of pest control, date for getting gas cylinder, dates for groceries, details of laundry bills etc. And suddenly he realises that he never shared any of all this burden; and she had single handedly shouldered all this responsibility without ever mentioning it. The shadow of repentance gets heavy. He is saddened for the lost glory of a flower grieving her absence and at last they are united.

            The message really disturbed me; because the same morning I had also read an article by a mother who quit her job for doing justice to her new role as a mother. She had specifically mentioned how she wanted to cook great food for her child and she imagined how after eating, her baby would call her ‘the best mom in the world’ with a peck on her cheek. She wanted to always be there for her husband when he returned home. It was all fine. I felt respect for her choices but the sad part was she also had given tips based on her experiences to cope with the depression that might descend on a woman who leaves behind her career. And also, a part of her identity.

            

Usually I am not a person with self doubt but some unknown chord inside the brain of an expectant mother was touched within me.

         

I had to speak about it. I asked my husband, ”Will you miss me if I'm gone? Because I don't do any household chores, I don’t cook. Why would you ever notice my absence?”

        

He was surprised at my question. Moreover he was appalled and asked how could I imagine such trivialities to matter in our relationship. He thought, I knew what we meant for each other. He repeated what he had told me a thousand times, “I love you for what you are and don’t want you to fit in any stereotype.” Then we spoke about the core values of a human being and how we respected each other for them. I calmed down. But, I had to think !

  How do I want to be remembered or missed by my loved ones?

              I am an educated and working woman. I always wanted to create my own identity. I never dreamt of marrying a prince charming and living happily ever after, just beside him. I never accepted the securities that came at the cost of my freedom. Though it is a small feat, it is achieved with my own efforts. It is not, and was never meant to be an end in itself. If it doesn’t widen my horizons and provide me new opportunities or new experiences, it must be utterly unthoughtful of me to achieve it in the first place.

Here is what I want.

              

I want my child to know me as a  strong, determined, independent woman who is always there to help her every time she falls, who is quiet capable of doing it physically and psychologically, who is always there for her no matter what she does, who is the person she can rely upon, who knows her self worth and who prioritises herself without guilt, who doesn’t like to repent in life and who lives life every moment and chooses her own path.

My dear husband! I certainly don’t wish to wait back at home and provide a returning place to him at the cost of living my life. I will certainly do that but in a different way. We had written our own vows in our marriage and promised each other to build a place called home together. It would not be just a physical space but a mental space, which would provide strength to get out of comfort zone and fly away in unknown territories, with the belief in heart that when you return, there is one person whose heart is a resting place no matter how the world changes.To have such beauty in life,you need to live beautifully.

Indra Nooyi, the Pepsico CEO says, “I don’t think women can have it all. I just don’t think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all…We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I’m not sure they will say that I’ve been a good mom. I’m not sure. And I try all kinds of coping mechanisms…stay at home mothering was a full time job. Being a CEO for a company is three full time jobs rolled into one. How can you do justice to all? You can’t.”

Exactly! We can’t do justice to all. What worries me, is ‘wanting it all’. Why are we creating this need? Why are we trapped in a guilt conscience? If we think of it, even a man can not ‘have it all’ ( If a man does justice to his job, he is left with lesser time with the child whereas a stay at home mother enjoys the bliss of motherhood twenty four by seven ). But, there is no burden of ‘having it all’ on a man and therefore, no guilt for not having it! 

Why can’t a woman choose WHAT SHE WANTS? Why has the society burdened her with the concepts of ideal wife and ideal mother? Even when it comes to the success at workplace, it is measured through the lens of how well she balances and performs her duties as an ideal wife and an ideal mother at home. No solution will lead us to ‘have it all’. And, that is the reason, we need to decide what we want and be happy with our choices. We need to relook into our concepts of virtues. A streak of rebellion for following the right path, no matter how lonely you are, demanding and getting what you deserve, standing up against injustice are the virtues that need to be nurtured, not smothered.

Recently one detergent advertisement has been appreciated by many including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg ( It is worth watching ). The father repents for not setting a right example for his daughter so that she could expect right things from her husband. It leads me to think that unwarranted patience may give authenticity to wrong behaviour. 

When I think of my career, I don’t want my daughter to think that ‘sacrifice' is the only virtue. I want her to know that personal happiness is important if you want to remain sane and truly become a good human being. At the same time, I want her to remember that happiness cannot be an end in itself and sacrifice cannot be a virtue on its own. I love my work and I am in love with my image of myself working hard, burning midnight oil literally and being known by my work.I want my work to be a mirror of me and I want my daughter to love me for that.

In the process, I hope to inculcate some very important values in my daughter, more important than sacrifice. And I hope, with all the optimism in the world that probably someday, she will understand that it was ok if her mom was not an expert cook and it was perfectly fine if she could not make it to the parents meeting because of some important work. She would probably know that the passion with which her mom worked, enriched her own life as well. She would probably have the wisdom not to judge her mom with the trivial words like ‘good’ or ‘bad’. And I certainly hope that she would probably appreciate, that her mom’s freedom to choose how to live, free from social expectations and set norms, in some way led to her existence in a slightly better world. She would be the citizen of that world where it will not be necessary to ‘Have it ALL’.