Don’t let the title of this post fool you — it’s not really my last post. Rather, this is an idea I got from reading Joe Boughner’s blog, 42 Points on a Double Word Score. He issued a challenge to himself and other bloggers — what would you write if it was your last blog post ever? Make sure to check out Joe’s original post, where he is linking out to bloggers he reads as they complete his challenge, and his last post and then maybe try one of your own. I thought there would be no better day to do my last post than today, which is my 28th birthday.
What is there left to say?
When it all melts away, what can be said? Can be written?
In the end, none of this matters. Sure, we all want to be remembered for something, but that’s so selfish of us. Hell, the act of blogging is a selfish act, is it not? Is it nothing more than a testament that we were here and we were important and our thoughts mattered?
But in the end, none of that matters.
In the end, it’s not how many blog readers you have, or how much money you make, or the kind of house you live in that matter. It’s the people you surround yourself with.
The biggest mark you leave is on them.
We humans don’t like to think of our mortality — we would rather pretend we will live forever in order to avoid it. But we can’t escape that mortality coming.
We are even more foolish to think that we are all going to live to a ripe-old age. We’re not. Some of us will die young. Some will die middle-aged. And, yes, some will live until they’re 95.
Maybe that’s our problem. We measure our life in years instead of in experiences. A good life, we say, is one that was lived long. Perhaps a good life is one that is lived to the fullest and measured in experiences. And love.
It’s corny and cliché, I know, but love really is what matters when all the chips fall. When you lose your job or your mind or your car, if you have the love of someone to fall back on, that’s what matters.
The love in our life is too often what we take for granted. What we overlook. We go to bed and wake up with the same person every day, but we don’t even really see them anymore. We don’t see what’s right in front of our face because we become so used to it, we look past it.
Please, take a second to value the love that’s in your life every day — whether that be your partner, your kids, your family or your friends. Stop taking it for granted. After all, a day could come when its no longer there. Then it would be too late.
Live your dreams. Another cliché? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just how we should be living. Why are so many of us slaving away at a job we hate? Why are we so afraid to try? This year, I gave a try for a dream. I threw myself out there, got to take two steps forward before the door slammed shut.
But I took that one step — and that means the world to me.
Following your passion will make you happier than you could ever have imagined you’d be. Reach for the stars — you never know where you might end up.
Redefining a marriage
This weekend, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine called The Marrying Kind. In it, Lisa Belkin takes a look at how the roles in marriage — specifically the role of the wife — have changed from her mother’s generation, down to her generation, down to my generation.
Belkin explores the stereotypical ’50s housewife who baked pies and sewed and did all the Leave it to Beaver things and how that has changed in today’s couples. She has some startling facts — only 16% of British women can make their own pie crust, compared to more than half their mothers who could, according to a supermarket survey and only 25% of young women today can poach an egg without the help of a kitchen gadget, while 75% of their mothers could (I can do the latter, but not the former).
But Belkin’s article is not another run-of-the-mill today’s wife wants to find the perfect career/mother balance, instead it takes a different look at marriage. It looks at how my generation tends to approach marriage as a partnership.
And it’s not because women are changing what they’re doing, it’s because of the men their meeting and marrying.
I re-read those couple paragraphs at least a dozen times.
It all makes sense to me, but it’s something I don’t think I ever consciously realized that it was what I wanted, or expected, in a lifelong mate.
I’ve never been a particularly “domestic” woman. I don’t tend to clean my apartment on a scheduled basis (I only do the dishes once a day because if I don’t, then I have nothing to eat off of). I don’t sort my whites from my colours (I swear it’s just to save on change, though). I don’t really cook (well, not until recently).
While marriage is not in my immediate future, the relationship I have with my partner right now is that of a partnership. Sure, I do most of the cooking, but he does a lot of the cleaning and laundry. And we both want one another to be successful professionally.
There is no expectation for either one of us to settle, or to fall into a pre-determined gender role. We wouldn’t want it that way. Partly because we don’t fit into those gender roles as individuals as it is: I’m a girl that likes sports and doesn’t do my hair or makeup, he’s a guy that like fashion and style and art.
But it’s the fact that our relationship is built on being partners that really makes us stand together. I don’t think I would want a marriage to be different than that.
Belkin says a lot of people my age use the term spouse or partner because of that. Right now I call my boyfriend my partner, because it seems silly to be calling him my boyfriend at my age. However, when and if I do get married, I will admit I don’t want to be considered someone’s partner or spouse — I want to be their wife. Being a wife may not carry the same roles and expectations as it has in the past, that word still means something to me.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that my generation is redefining marriage, so much as we are redefining the terms attached to that marriage — specifically what it means to be a wife or a husband.
After all, to have and to hold is still there, even if the pie is store bought nowadays.