My Feminist Manifesto, with balls
It would seem yet another topic has taken the media by storm – “balance” “having it all” – yada yada. More articles, more debates, more discussions on how women should, shouldn’t, can and can’t live their lives.
I’ll admit I hadn’t given it much attention. The latest issue of Time magazine with Sheryl Sandberg rocking the cover is still sitting unread next to my couch. I have no idea what she has to say. I think Melissa Mayer is a genius – I could care less about her work-life balance – just by being a her she’s managed to put Yahoo on the front page numerous times in less than a year. It’s like she quietly leaned up to the microphone of yet another press conference and whispered that she possessed the secret ability to grow both a business and a human being at exactly the same time and the media fell all over itself. Um hello. This isn’t a miracle. This is a woman. She has a brain, a uterus and a heart and she appears to enjoy exercising all 3 at the same time. Good for her. What the hell does that have to do with me? Or my woman-friends? Or any other woman on the planet? It doesn’t make her the model. Nor does it make a model of the woman who chooses never to have a career and instead focused on raising a family. Still, it doesn’t make a model of the woman who climbed a ladder for years, only to get to the top rung, declare she’d had enough and jump off that ladder and do something else.
There is no model.
And I’m tired of everyone trying to find one. I’m tired of headlines about great women who have achieved work-life balance. Is there a woman out there that the media would like to point out as having not found balance?
It’s in our nature to be balanced. Is it hard? Yes. Do we struggle with it? Yes. Is anyone completely failing? I doubt that. Because there isn’t a right answer. So I find it hard to believe there’s a wrong one.
If we want to put this discussion to rest once and for all (not to suggest there’s anything wrong with the discussion – it’s a good one – you’ll just notice no one’s having it about men…) then women have to start playing for the same team.
When the CEO of a Fortune 500 company crosses paths with a stay at home mom in the grocery store and they eye each other – one in a power suit and heels, the other in her yoga pants – they need to give each other a high-five.
They need to congratulate each other on figuring out what fulfilled and balanced meant for them, at that particular moment in their lives.
They need to admit that despite feeling confident in their choices, sometimes the grass still looks a little greener somewhere else. Because I don’t care who you are, some days you’d like to fill out that power suit and some days you’d rather wear yoga pants.
They need to give each other a reassuring pat on the back and say, “yes, of course you can change your mind in a few weeks, or a few months, or a few years.”
And after that, they need to lean in and whisper some woman-truth to each other:
“I haven’t cooked a meal in 3 weeks.”
“I’m wearing my underwear inside out because I choose an Ellen rerun over laundry.”
“I forgot to pay my electric bill this month.”
“This kid is driving me crazy and I’m thinking of abandoning him among the child-size mannequins.”
There is only one constant, one truth about the art of juggling – sometimes you drop a ball. (Maybe there are other truths to juggling, I have no idea, it’s a weak metaphor. My apologies to those who actually juggle and know there are other truths, probably relating to physics and gravity.) If one ball is soaring in the air, catching everyone’s attention and dazzling all the critics, then by the very nature of juggling, a few more things are below it. In turn, they’re soaring too, and they’re also resting, or mid-flight. And because this is life, not a magical circus, sometimes the balls get dropped.
It’s fine. Just pick it up.
There’s no need to panic. No need for “Oh my God I’ve dropped it! It’s ruined! I’m ruined! Everyone has witnessed the drop of this ball!”
Just pick up the damned ball.
You might even feel better if you laugh really loudly.
Or if you find another woman near by and say, “Oh my God! Look what I did! Ha! I dropped that ball!”
And maybe that woman will say, “Oh honey, I dropped that ball last week! Dropped the other one last month and couldn’t find it for 2 weeks!”
You know what else frequently happens to jugglers? One of their balls will wear out. It’s true. The ball gets beat up or it’s color starts to fade and it just doesn’t have the same glitz that it used to when it’s soaring in the air. Typically when that happens the juggler will set that ball aside and get a new ball.
We need to support each other in picking new balls. Because life is very fluid. It changes. All the damn time. And it’s exhausting, isn’t it? Just when you think you’ve figured out how to handle your balls, the career ball gets dingy and a cute little baby ball starts looking shiny and fun. There’s no reason to think your balls of today have to be your balls of tomorrow. And if the balls of tomorrow are not how you imagined them, well then, that’s a nice little adventure isn’t it?
It’s fine. Switch your damn balls.
And you know sometimes balls don’t work out exactly how you thought they would. Like maybe you thought you’d be fine with just that little baby ball and just a few other balls but after a while you really miss your old dingy career ball.
It’s fine. Get more balls.
All this ball talk to say, I have no idea why we’re all taking about achieving balance and a meaningful life as if there is a concrete answer to that question.
We need to stop looking at balance as something we’ll have today. We’d be better served to look at balance as something we’ll find throughout our life time. Chances are, over the course of our lives, we’ll be blessed with opportunities to juggle all sorts of balls, some of them forever, some of them for just a short while. Sometimes we’ll have everything we want on the same day. Some days, we’ll be 100% focused on one thing. But I’m confident that each of us, as women, will know which balls to catch and which to let fall; we’ll know when it’s time for new balls or more balls.
And I think we already know that. But sadly, we’re bombarded by media of all sorts suggesting that some other woman has figured it out better than we have.
That’s what’s threatening our balls. Not our inability to juggle them. It’s our natural habit to take our eyes off our own balls and look at someone else’s. But you can’t keep your own balls in line if we don’t keep an eye on them. < Insert eye on the ball, no crying, and all those other baseball lessons here.>
We’ve got to stop looking at everyone else’s balls.
We can do this. Without exact instruction and without trying to emulate others. We can do this. We’re women. We were born to do this.
But we’ve got to be a team. A woman team. We’ve got to encourage and accept and high-five and spew honesty instead of fake, over-processed, instagramed perfection. I know I’m not the only person preaching this right now. There are women who have preached the same and they’ve preached it far better than I have. (And with fewer references to balls.)
But I’m just not sure when it’s going to take hold.
When it’s going to be reality.
When the words “Good for her!” will come as naturally as “Why is she doing that?”
When this conversation about how to achieve balance will end because it will be understood that women will always know what they want, when they want it, and how to get it. And then by the Grace of God they will change their damn minds.
When all the other women will cheer, because yet another member of our team has found her balance, her fulfilled, her meaningful – if only for today.
Until then, I’ll preach on.
Love yourself.
Love the women around you.
Juggle those balls, baby.
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