Growing up? What’s that?

One of these days I looked myself in the mirror and asked what did I want to be when I grow up? Where did I plan to be now in that scenario of my life I played out in my head as a child? And then I smiled and I thought “this is it”. I was raised to believe education is the best way for women to make it big. To reach for independence. To enjoy the simple little things in life. I wanted to be a detective and a writer and a student for ever and ever, and the way things work, I'm living the dream. I wanted a place of my own and a handful of friends I can hang with and count on. I’m here, but somehow there are plenty of people who still think I have a lot of growing up to do. As in get married and have babies. Make big bucks and move to a house in the suburbs. Buy a car and take the kids to piano lessons and soccer.

I see growing up as something different. I believe most of the roles people expect us to play have to be tried on. To see if they fit. That’s why we play all kinds on enactments of adult life as children. We try different jobs and we play house. We do the same as young adults. And some people decide it’s the real thing. But I believe in taking chances and knowing yourself. When people just assume the roles they were set out to play from early childhood, can we really call that growing up? Marrying your high school sweetheart fresh out of college and having a baby a couple of years after finding a stable job. Is that what growing up is all about? Because I’d rather call it settling. Not just settling down. Settling for what you were told your life should be like. Like microwaving a frozen diner instead of trying some amazing Thai cuisine. It’s true that most generations before us had a clear path before them and that saved them from experiencing a quarter-life crisis. But shouldn’t we consider ourselves lucky? With the amazing variety of options we now have, we can be the architects of our own lives.

My childhood best friend used to tell me she wants to graduate from college and get a job in a nice office and marry her one true love and have kids and live happily ever after. I guess this is it for her. I think she is soon to marry her first boyfriend, they’ve been together for the last seven years, if you don’t count the one when they first met in junior high. She got a job working for a multinational corporation and her parents must be really proud. Her life was a straight line towards her childhood dreams and I’m nobody to say that she is stuck or just settling. What I’m saying is that most of us don’t get to be like that.

Most people I know and hang around are actually extremely indecisive about their future even in their mid-20s. It might be that there is a common denominator that brought us together, while maybe people who couple early in life and marry at our age eventually  have friends that are more similar to them. What I wanted to say is that we are just as grown up as they are. And maybe more. Because we got to experience so many sides of life and we’ve been on our own and played house and tried all kinds of other wacky combinations. We traveled at least as much and met tons of people, we’ve questioned ourselves more and got to know ourselves better in the process. We didn’t take things for granted, be it religion or taste in men, and most times chose to think for ourselves instead of caving to the majority’s opinions and precepts. As far as relationships go, we’re the ones who won’t ask ourselves what would that have been like, because we went there and we already know. Being experienced and open-minded is what I consider to be grown-up. Because growing up should be more about growing than moving up towards a position set for us from birth. These indecisive people I know might marry and have children as well. But they will be the ones who make a grown-up decision to do so. The ones who can fully enjoy being mothers and wives/fathers and husbands as a personal decision they can celebrate, without looking back and thinking they could have taken a year off to back-pack around the world or given a chance to that cute person they used to know in college. So yes, I am all grown up now and I’m where I’m supposed to be. And I can go anywhere from here.

Partner vs. Friends

Friends are that special glue that keeps everything together in life, even in moments when it seems like everything is falling apart. Real friends will be there for us in our good times for celebration and in the bad times as shoulders to cry on or as that sometimes-so-needed reality slap. A real friend will look you in the eye and tell you what you need to hear which may be completely different from what you’d want to hear. Through them, we reflect our own reality, we learn and we grow. We practice social skills, communication, empathy, monstrous hangovers and the works. What person in their right mind would consciously set their friends aside? I’m thinking nobody, but still, you see it happen over and over and over again when a relationship begins to get serious. What’s the underlying mechanism there?

It has probably happened to each of us in a certain point of our lives. I remember back in the beginning of university, I entered a long distance relationship. I really liked the guy, only problem was that we saw each other once a month, sometimes twice and sometimes once in three months. Young, infatuated me was hooked on this even though the large intervals of not seeing each other caused great tension. All of my attention was in keeping the contact alive and running, in dreaming up new situations to improve the frequency in which we saw each other and in imagining a nice happy ending. Unfortunately, all that attention had been taken from that which I used to offer my friends, colleagues and anything else that meant social life, and the most disturbing thing of all was that I had no idea I was doing all that, I hadn’t the faintest clue that I was hurting myself and others… It was only after one year that I realized what I had done. That relationship’s lessons changed me into a more cautious person, unwilling to let my guard down and, later on, unable to strip myself from my own defenses. Keeping your head over the surface and being in control will allow you to be able to make choices and stick to them.

Some more examples from two of my closest friends. One of them, great girl, had a 4 year relationship. They were already discussing marriage and building a life together, planning to have kids one day. In these 4 years, I had seen my friend less and less, and even throughout those rare occasions, it was many times that when I wanted to meet her, she showed up with her boyfriend. I am not to be misunderstood here, the guy was a really, really great guy, but when two female friends who have known each other since forever and have shared stories of “great deeds” meet, you just can’t have the girl-talk in front of the boyfriend! Then this one day, I met her by herself. I asked her how come there was so much distance gradually shoved between us, but she didn’t understand what I meant. She looked me in the eyes and told me that she was happy, but the expression of her face was that of a person who is on the verge of losing everything yet tries to tell herself that it’s alright. So I let that one slip. Half a year and a break-up later, she comes over at my place and tells me that I was right, there was a lot of distance and she had neglected a lot while in that relationship… but without noticing anything was truly wrong at all.

Is it imperative that in a relationship we have to choose between the partner and our own social life? Isn’t it amazing(ly dumb) how people sometimes feel compelled to choose between either themselves or their partner, even though nobody had requested such a thing? Why do people feel a need to sacrifice when no sacrifice is being asked for? Maybe the last question is easiest to answer at the moment. People always feel the need for gratification, the ego craves it within the subconscious mind and it makes us do the weirdest things. We give up our friends, we scramble up our schedules, we even change who we are for a person who might have never wanted us to do so. Why? Because then we can use the line “But I did all this for YOU!” and somehow create a mixed feeling of flattery and guilt in the other person who will automatically change their behavior towards us. Of course, if you’re dumb enough to try that line with someone of a higher level, you’ll just get a raised eyebrow as a response, together with the “I never asked you to do that” line that I love so much. That line can do magic, cause it’s a gateway to either the right questions that produce the right answers which may induce somewhat of a revelation leading to not being such a needy little bitch anymore, or it can decompensate underlying hysteria or other mental disorders responsible for various childish ways of getting attention.

We should never feel that we have to choose between who we are and who somebody else would want us to be. I agree that each one of us has plenty of room for improvement, but it has to come because we want it, not because some potential partner wants it for us. The moment one chooses to become a fake copy of what the other person would project as “ideal”, that’s the moment in which one renounces who they are and what defines them… including their friends. Sometimes we end up being so caught up in a relationship, that instead of enjoying it as who we are, we end up being consumed by an underlying fear of losing that bliss and that person. In that state of mind, our subconscious tries to go through all possibilities of annihilating the fear, but our ego will allow it only a few options: renounce self and become whatever the partner wants, play deceiving mind games to maybe try to manipulate properly, be a good actor on the relationship scene, then immediately change your mask whenever possible. Boys and girls, things don’t work that way. Even if this is what you see around yourselves every day, these are not solutions to having a healthy relationship. Eventually, if you’re serious, you’ll want to keep that person and, keep in mind, all masks and all lies have expiry dates, and once their dates have expired, you will be exposed with all your petty frustrations. I can’t even begin to emphasize this enough: it is Not worth it!

But enough with the bad examples, it’s time for the only real exception I have met so far. One of my best friends is a great guy, great yet sometimes grotesque sense of humor and really, really smart. He’s been in a relationship for about 5 years and it’s still going and no matter how tough it sometimes got, he never really let go of his closest friends. I admire him for that! No relationship is perfect, but he didn’t take out their imperfections on those around him, he didn’t sacrifice us senselessly, and him and his lovely girlfriend always managed to work things out by themselves. I remember at the beginning of their relationship, she was suspicious that him and I were hanging out so much and talking about everything and anything and probably that might have caused certain tension, but my friend never gave our friendship up and he never gave the woman he loved up and now, after a few years, me and her get along wonderfully! It is never a matter of choice, it’s all a matter of being smart enough to keep your individuality and respect the other ones individuality while creating something based on stability, trust and love. It’s a lot easier to give it all up blindly than to actually go the extra mile to make everything work.

So, when your time comes (if it hasn’t already) and infatuation has taken over your senses, butterflies are humping the insides of your stomach, being in love has dropped your apparent IQ by a fair number, what will you do? Will you feel compelled to give yourself away for a partner who might have never asked for such sacrifice or will you stand your ground, look him in the eyes and say “This is me, take it or leave it”?

Freaks and monsters and what not

Now it’s common knowledge that there are different levels of knowing a person. Different depths, if you allow me. I always thought I may not seem much at the first glance, but when people get to know me they find I am quite something. But what I fear for as long as I can remember is that they might get to know me too well. Reach the dark depths where my freak lives. The little monsters in my head. That scary place you don’t just walk into. I’ve met people who introduced me to their own, one way or the other. Sometimes we even paired our freaks, gave them matching slippers and let them walk around while we were busy doing other things. But it is rarely that we can meet people we can accept entirely. Knowing the little monsters they can be. And there are maybe fewer people who can see and live with our own.

Most obvious type of freakiness we think of is in the sexual sense. When it comes to sex, it’s a mine field. Or a fence race. There are as may boundaries as people. Or even more. And the ones on the other side of the line are the freaks. Because people judge. Oh, they judge all right and their favorite thing to point a finger at is whatever is different from them. And in our sexual preferences we are all different. Now it maybe depends on how thick the line is. Some people say no, some people say maybe, others would never go there. We’ll probably hit a lot of those fences in our lives. Granted we draw the line farther than most of our sex partners. What I find funny is that the world is still full of people who hide in tiny little boxes. You know, the kind that do it with the lights off and just lay there. But some of the fences we’ll bring down and some we’ll just turn our backs to. When it’s worth it, even tanks can be in order. Some people will make us climb our own walls, take us further. And there will always be some people on the side labeling whoever is not on their side of the line. Screw them. Sex freaks are fun and at some point we’re lucky enough to find a freak or more that match our own. If we were all “normal”, we’d still be wearing night gowns with a hole around our genitalia. And say “Hail Mary” while waiting for it to be done with.

We are also freaks in the intellectual sense. People will always like weird stuff. They will listen to music that is too violent or too moronic for us to bear. They will watch movies we’d never be able to stay awake through and enjoy things we can’t understand. Lots of people we meet will not be able to have an argument without absurd statements or without a fight. Intellectually, it is very difficult to find a match. Tuning freakiness is a question of finesse when it comes to the brain. I’ve met so many attractive men who could make me laugh but when it came to conversation, they turned out not to be the brightest crayons in the box. Giving good conversation is maybe more important than giving good head. People are sometimes appalled by my tastes or preferences or social standings. And I am of those of others. We all meet freaks every day. But to some people we just feel like home.

The biggest freaks I’ve met so far were the emotionally handicapped. And I’m not only talking about commitment freaks. There are freaks at the other extreme as well. People who can hold on to someone with such violence they eventually drive them away. Those who threaten they’ll commit suicide if left astray. The ones that take you on guilt trips for every phone call you make or don’t take, for every person that looks at you funny on the street and so on. The crazy insecure possessive type. Of course the commitment challenged are more often met today. Probably because the other freaks already paired up. And this guys might never do. It should be easy by now to spot the difference. But it’s not, because our egos make us blind and stupid. I guess we somehow think we could be the ones to change that. To take a commitment freak and turn him into a white fence, barking dog, two kids kind of guy. But I’ve heard so many excuses I’m afraid to say I’ve heard them all. Most of us will never be that girl. The one who turns the available sign on. This is a form of emotional freak as well, this unavailable bachelor hunting. However, I believe whatever freak we run into, if we can’t fit it in our own crazy monster zoo, we’d better let it go. You can’t really change freaks, you can only pat their heads and kiss them goodnight.

Open Relationships and the Four Types

I used to date this awesome guy, we were good friends, able to communicate smoothly about anything, had amazing conversation and the physical chemistry was outstanding. This went on for two-three weeks, until the obviously inevitable question came up: where was all that leading to? So we took a few days to think it over and then this one night, as he was walking me home, he broke the ice and said he wanted an open relationship.

Hmm… Open relationship, I thought to myself. A pseudo-sexual ‘thing’ between two people in which they are allowed to sleep around with others, share their affection in multiple places and occasionally collect STDs and spread them around like Christmas presents or rotten Easter eggs. Who invented this milestone of compromise anyway, and why? So I thought I’d tap into that idea for a short while and figure out why certain people don’t find one partner as being enough. I agree that a relationship can become boring after a while and partners lose interest, but that’s basically because they take each other for granted. They think that if in the beginning everything was all rainbows and Twilight glitter, it would be only normal to assume that things would go on like that effortlessly! They either don’t get that a relationship needs constant building and partners should always offer each other constant feedback to be able to keep constructing new and fresh ways of maintaining the spark alive, or they’re too lazy or uninterested to actually do it. These days it’s a lot easier to get an easy fuck than actually put some real effort in making a relationship work.

I had tea with a good female friend of mine today and we had a nice talk about break-ups and the feeling they leave you afterwards. I was going on about the immediate frustration one feels after breaking up when you suddenly have a strong  urge and need… and then she interrupted me and told me that even as a fabulous, single chick, she never had a sexual need she didn’t manage to fix and that with great male specimens. I then told her that I was meaning to say “the need of being held and just know that there’s someone around whenever you want him”. All of those great guys she had mentioned, they were all “emotionally retarded”, unable to commit, but probably into the whole idea of open relationships. I understand that some guys are out there to score and collect a nice list of what and who they scored… but what about the chicks? We often joke about how when men have multiple sex partners, they become studs, while when women do the same, they are viewed as cheap sluts. Whether we like it or not, society as it still is today is promoting that idea. And it’s not only guys who encourage it, but it’s the women as well, pointing out fingers at each other, saying “She is such a slut!” just to be able to mask their own flaws or dysfunctional sexual issues. Unless that changes, women will always have it harder than men in the world of “open relationships”.

In this regard, I think there are four kinds of people out there. The Overly-Possessive, who will explode in jealousy every time the partner does or says anything that leaves even the tiniest room for interpretation, the Territorial, who has a great sense of protection towards friends, family and partner and who is strict in his or her rules but not absurd, the Open, also previously labeled as “emotionally retarded” or unable to commit, who is out there for various experiences but never manages to put enough soul into one of them to actually move it forward, and there’s the Nympho, for whom sex is like a smoking addiction: as many cigarettes as possible, from whatever pack or brand there is and regardless of the means to achieve it. These four types mix into all sorts of interesting or strange combinations. A Nympho will always go well with another Nympho, an Open with another Open and a Territorial would generally go well with another Territorial if they are lucky enough to have a similar view point on the rules and standards they so much enjoy implying on themselves and others. Unfortunately, Overly-Possessives go well with therapy, because their behavior ends up hurting themselves and those around, usually the closest people they’d have. If you put two Over-Posessives together, they’ll end up lashing out at each other with all the frustration that they both have and will eventually end up having more than they bargained for, either in a cell or in a hospital.

It’s hard to get a Territorial to want to change their mind frame to be able to ‘commit’ to an open relationship since it goes against the very idea of stability and knowing there’s someone there for you whenever you need him or her. So when the guy I wrote about in the beginning told me to think of it, as he left, it took me less than 20 seconds to accept the answer: no, an open relationship wouldn’t work for me. As a matter of fact, I wondered if, at that point, any type of relationship would’ve done the trick since I felt so in love with life and all the experiences it had to offer, I almost felt like a cross-over Open-type, with the background of a Territorial. But if I had gone with the idea of an open relationship, things would have been great since we used to hang out all the time, had common friends, common activities… until I would have seen him with another woman, and probably right there and then, my Territorial side would have emerged and put ice-cold distance in all of those great domains me and him used to share. So I decided that I didn’t want to sacrifice all that, just to pretend to have accepted something that my system would naturally reject.

If it’s anything at all that I have learned from that experience, it’s that it is our own personal duty to respect ourselves. We cannot demand respect from others or consider ourselves able to respect others unless we know how to best respect ourselves and for that, we must know ourselves, even if that means sticking a ten-page-label on our foreheads, which may be subject to change. We must be able to know ourselves so that when it happens that somebody makes us chose between their perception and our being, we can easily say “This is me, I can totally do this” or “This goes against who I am” and stick to it. I’m not saying we should be rigid sticks since change is all around us and we change as well, but it is our duty to know when and how we do.

So whether you’re an Overly-Possesive, Territorial, Open or Nympho, always try to better yourself, always take a good look inwards and ask “Is this who I am? Is this what I want?” because we have the most amazing ability to surprise ourselves when least expected.

Judgment and Labeling

You walk into the closest store, eager to buy a jar of cherry jam. You see the jar, you read the label, you pay for it, take it home and, when you open it, it turns out to be strawberry jam and you hate strawberries! If food products were like relationships, this would’ve been something to happen each and every day. Thank God they aren’t, or else we’d be either starving, or lowering our eating standards a lot.

Labels are extremely necessary on our food products, but how necessary are they in a relationship and, most importantly, why? In the past couple of days, I ended up comparing men to ketchup. I have no idea why ketchup, maybe because the one in my fridge is starting to go empty. If you go to a store and you simply buy ketchup, it’s highly probable that once you’ll taste it, you won’t skyrocket cause of the awesome flavor. You accept it and you eat it the way it is and maybe every now and then wonder if there’s something better out there. Ketchup, in fact, is much more complex: sweet, spicy, bio, extra-hot, for pasta, for pizza, for chicken and, not to forget, all these made in various styles by various brands. And you Need a label there, to be able to choose what really suits your taste best. But, for every label to have served its purpose, first and foremost, you need to know exactly What you are looking for, because otherwise, you’ll just end up spending your life staring at well-labeled products and eventually picking something randomly.

It’s almost the same with men, only without the luxury of having an easy label on them for us to read and decide whether it’s good enough or not. It’s not just enough to say you want a ‘man’ in your life, that would be like saying you like ketchup, but haven’t the faintest idea what kind! Also, in this situation, it is wrong and risky to try to label a man after a brief overview. This is one of the most common mistakes women make (and probably men as well), trying their best to jump in a relationship as fast as possible once they find someone they think they’d like. Is it because of the fear of having the guy taken away by another woman in case you think about it too much? Or maybe the fear of being alone, or having the guy change his mind? Either way, we put senseless effort in trying to impress by apparently figuring out what that person would like to see in a potential partner, then trying to mold ourselves into it. Obviously, we’re getting labeled as well when we do that and it’s not the right label. The males, when they think they hit jackpot, also start going out of their way and brush up on their behavior and words, to make the same great impression, thus ending up being wrongly labeled as well. The fix to this is easy: just stop putting effort in trying to become something you’re not naturally built as, and put all that energy to good use in trying to know each other the way you really are.

Here’s what happens if you move on with this. Let’s say each partner is very happy about how he thinks their counterpart is and a relationship starts, based on what they think they know about eachother. Their expectations will have everything to do with the initial labels and so, obviously, one will expect either a lot more, or a lot more different things from the other. In time, the truth surfaces and it eventually reaches the point in which “You weren’t the person I fell in love with” is being tossed around like a frisbee. I’ve seen it happen all too many times. Many people don’t have the necessary patience in getting to know their potential partner before actually starting something, especially if there’s an insanely strong sexual attraction. From the point of view of efficiency, it’s something worth taking your time to do. “Label” your partner correctly, know him/her as s/he is, see what you can accept and what not, then decide if moving on is a good option. Do that, and you’ll have the perfect foundation for something greater. Neglect that and you’ll end up building in a swampy area with earthquakes and stampeding lemmings.

I know that labeling is considered a bad thing by most people. I agree that superficially labeling is a bad thing. Also, there isn’t a person who doesn’t label situations, relationships and people. It’s like saying that people shouldn’t judge. Everybody judges everybody and everything. It is a natural process of our mental integration in the world we live in, so as to be able to make decisions in life. Also, every person in their right mind will always respect and appreciate the ones who own the ability of good judgment. I think the idea of it being “wrong to judge” has emerged because of the majority of people letting out all sorts of statements based on wrong, harsh, interest-related, hateful, unfair judgment. But if all people were to analyze situations properly and, with a clear mind, make the right judgment, it would, in time, become something dearly socially accepted, instead of a stigmata of the dumb and pretentious.

I remember years ago, at a psychology course, we were told that the human being us unable of being anything but subjective. There will be some individuals who will try to rise above their very own condition and try to reach objectiveness, but without complete success. What these bright minds can succeed, is to earn an amazing viewpoint over their surroundings, which will give them the upper hand in many ways based on applying the understanding of how things work. This might make them seem they have reached an objective view, but one can never 100% exclude personal implication, and thus, one can never be 100% objective. The reason why I’m saying this is to reinforce the fact that judging and labeling are natural impulses that only become destructive when done improperly and for the wrong reasons.

The easiest thing to do is to judge or label wrongly. That’s where certain stereotypes emerge from. Like “dumb blondes”, “sex-deprived nerds”, “slutty cheerleaders”, “men with big nose/hands/feet = man with big penis”. It’s funny in a very sad way, that people still believe these stereotypes (and many more) and try to invoke them on and on because it obviously proves a vast knowledge of the world we live in (right?). Personally, I’ve met naturally blonde chicks who are very smart, I’ve met nerds that had a better sex life than other ‘normal’ people I knew, two cheerleaders who beneath all that cheery-cheer were hard working girls, studying hard to make a university career… as for the one about sizes, I’ll just say that it’s a myth and nothing more.

Bottom line on labeling and judging… if we can accept that it is something that we’re all doing, let’s at least try to do it right, without hurting ourselves and others. Maybe next time we want to label ourselves or those around us as something, it would be a great experience to try to give that view-point some depth (a lot of it) and reconsider our initial wording. Besides, how can we expect others to respect us as we are, when we’re not even trying to see them as they are or allow them to see us in-depth?

As a side-note, we created a Mischievous Sweethearts Facebook site in which we will be announcing new posts. Since the wonderful winter holidays are over, and both Daisy and I resumed work, the posting schedule is going to change. We’ll be having new posts on Tuesdays and Saturdays, which will sum up to a total of 4 posts per week. Of course, in case of an inspiration-emergency, there will be more posts at any hour, which we will announce on the Facebook site. So, feel free to join and let us know of opinions and suggestions!

Fairy tale conditioning

Now I know I’m probably stating out things that most people already know, the feminist critical literature has been tackling this subject for years now. But after referring so often to the concept of Prince Charming, I really felt like a talk on fairy tales was in order. There are many ways in which we are socialized and even socially conditioned and I believe gender roles to be one of the strongest ways in which nurture builds characters.

In early childhood we are told stories that fascinate us, but also give us guidelines to who we should eventually become when we grow up. Apart from the gender-specific behavior we learn from our families, there is this powerful effect stories have upon us. They answer to our need to enjoy our imagination and also to our spirit of adventure. But the things we eventually end up learning may not be just human values and qualities like kindness, courage, determination, integrity and so on. We learn that as girls or boys we have separate places in the social world and that we don’t succeed in the same way.

Women in fairy tales are most often portrayed as helpless, damsels in distress waiting for their prince to come find them. They lack initiative and they lack any distinctive personality traits. The only thing that we know about most of them is that they are beautiful and that is their main worth. They are usually passive to events that come about in their lives and are only thrown into adventure by outside forces and with the help of supernatural creatures. Cinderella dreams of going to the ball, but it is only after the Fairy Godmother gives her a dress and a carriage that she can actually act upon her desires. Most main female characters in fairy tales are still stuck in the domestic realm. Snow White, even when she runs away to the dwarfs’ house, takes care of the cleaning and cooking and Cinderella does that all day long for her family. Even in some of the Romanian stories, where the main characters are girls and they are revered for being more that pretty faces, their smarts and kindness are put to the service of their families and they all do housework and care for others and that is the only thing they are rewarded for. Moreover, their devotion to men is religious. “The Poor Man’s Smart Daughter” eventually marries the town’s judge and when he gets upset with her and wants to throw her out, the one thing she chooses to take back with her (given the option to pick anything) is her husband. In stories where the main character is a prince who goes on a great adventure to rescue his kingdom or a princess, the women’s role is purely of décor. They sit around waiting to be saved from the evil grip of the monster and then indiscriminately marry the one that saves them. They are envied not for their personality, but for their beauty, which is what gets them in trouble and saves them at the same time. The evil forces want to kill or kidnap them just because of their looks, they pose no substantial threat as persons, but rather as a better and improved model of the female charms.

Talking about evil forces, the alternatives to the beautiful submissive soon-to-be-housewife in all fairy tales are women with supernatural powers. The good ones are Fairy Godmothers or kind old witches who give a helping hand. The others are evil witches or bad mothers. Any unmarried woman in stories has to be a witch. One of my anthropology teachers believes that witchcraft is strongly associated to women’s sexuality. So one way of explaining why some women chose to live outside of society’s clearly ascribed roles was witchcraft. The years of witch hunting were, in his opinion, just a measure to reinforce traditional gender roles.

So the templates for being a woman we get from fairy tales as little girls are nice and simple. You can either be a beautiful homebound princess, who is patient and kind and submissive and lives to meet her prince. Or you can be a witch who is forever alone and lives only to help or maim others.

The role models boys get from fairy tales are completely different. One annoying thing is that almost all male heroes are royalty or at least really rich. They are good looking and great fighters, fearless and intelligent. Men are part of the public sphere in all fairy tales. They roam around looking for adventure and saving damsels in distress. They don’t wait for things to happen, they go and take it. In a way, these are all attributes that are more difficult to live up to than those ascribed to women. And they create unrealistic expectations for the female readers about what a worthy suitor is supposed to be like. It is rarely that we find that knightly strength and courage in a man. They don’t fight monsters for us and don’t take us away to a castle on a white horse. We don’t instantly fall in love with the first one that rides into our lives and don’t live happily ever after with them. We rarely meet any male evil characters, though. In German fairy tales they are  barely existent and Romanian folklore has created this semi-human creature, similar to a basilisk, that kidnaps young princesses and is always defeated by Prince Charming. They are also secluded and, the way I see it, have all the psychological traits of a sociopath.

So boys and girls, we’ve all been taught by stories adults told us that there are two ways to go: comply with our gender roles, get married, have babies and live happily ever after, or stay bachelors and turn into monsters or slutty witches. Even though the world has changed so much, we still have these patterns of how we are supposed to be and live our lives buried conveniently in our subconscious.

If I ever get to have children, I want them to hear the real stories. About women who worked their way through school or even went to prison for their convictions who eventually got to run some of the largest or most powerful countries in the world. About real life princesses who raised money to feed the poor and give as many children as possible an education. About those who were laughed at and discredited, but kept fighting for our right to now be better educated and reach parity in economic power with men, for our right to choose whether to and what kind of family we want to dedicate ourselves to, for giving us the horse and the sword to be our own Prince Charming.

Crisis: an End or an Opportunity?

Upon realizing university life is going to end, and after 5 or 6 years, one is being tossed out in the unknown, the only sensible thing to do is to start thinking intensely. What job will I have? Will I have any free time anymore? Will I have to move from my current city to be able to make a living? What if I fail? What if the years that have past have been the best years life had to offer and it’ll all be over now? Obviously, after such thoughts, the only thing that’s left to do is to crash in the closest Blues bar, with a bunch of friends and a whole lot of beer and try to re-live those years.

If we are still so far away from what some people would consider ‘mid-life’ then is there such a thing called a quarter-life crisis? Is there such a crisis whenever we are faced with an apparently life-changing inevitability? End of university, marriage, divorce, having kids. Why do we assume that ‘the best years’ are always those behind us, instead of looking forward to making those ahead of us as good as they can possibly get and have each ‘next year’ be better than the one before?

Every great change has personal implication and personal responsibility attached to it. You chose to go to university knowing that it will one day end and you’ll have to make use of that piece of paper called a diploma in being able to put bread and expensive wine on your table, classy food, have a social life and a good career. Freezing up before the inevitability of time passing is a huge waste that bears the risk of missing out on opportunities. An acquaintance once said that every day we are being given at least 3 opportunities in the least, to be able to better ourselves or improve our careers or just snap into a revelation that’s meant to push us forward in times of need. At first it seemed way too optimistic for my ears, but his words stuck to me and made me wonder… how much of life passes us by without us actually noticing and allowing ourselves to really make something out of it and enjoy it properly? Are we confined in a perception that blinds us from accepting random opportunity? Are the goals that we set and that we think we need, so strict and so rigid that they won’t permit any other type of freedom in movement or thought?

And what is a crisis anyway? At that moment we are being entrapped by fear and anxiety, fear of losing something we think we had, anxiety of moving on into something we might not be able to predict. It’s a turning point in which there’s no real way of going back, but your legs shiver at the thought of moving forward. Many chose to try to re-live their “years of glory” but eventually end up feeling it’s not quite the same and, obviously, it cannot be the same.

A crisis is the sign that the perfect moment has arrived for one to sincerely think their paths over, or maybe even reconsider them entirely. There is an immense freedom once you get past such a moment and you actually grow the balls to make the first step in the new direction. One must realize that time goes by anyway, but, in fact, isn’t lost at all. Each and every experience serves its own purpose and meaning if it is done at the Right Time and in its right time, not sooner, nor later, not hasty and not dragged along beyond its expiry date. We take all these experiences with us and use them as building blocks for who we are and for always pushing the limits of what we can do. The more we become, the more we understand and the more we understand, the more capable we are to move along and put all the knowledge and wisdom life experiences gave us to good use.

As I said, there is immense freedom in getting past a crisis and the first step always seems the hardest. Fearing the unknown is a reflection of insecurity or bad communication with ourselves about what we really want. I don’t think there’s a recipe that tells you how to make it through, I believe each of us have our own demons to deal with and each individual will deal with theirs in a different way, best suited for the type of person that they are. But there’s no point in being petrified by your own inner demons in such a situation. Since they’re yours, they might just be there to teach you a valid point which might be eye-opening.

Not being able to predict what’ll happen next is something that disturbs lots of people. We want a guarantee for everything, we want to be able to control everything, and we always need to be assured, in one way or another, of the certainty of situations or the presence of certain people around us. This isn’t a bad thing, considering the type of society we live in, but it becomes a bad thing when this need becomes so dominant, it turns people into stubborn asses which can’t see past the limitations that they themselves have cast. Choosing to allow a degree of magic and miracle and chance into our lives can spice them up and give way to new and even more interesting challenges.

If we were truly able to predict and control all there is, wouldn’t everything in life seem like a dull routine? There’d be no crisis, but there would be no joyous surprises either. I’ll leave you with a few maybe ambiguous words that a dear friend of mine told me years ago and which I seem to understand a little bit more of with every passing year: “Certainty is the wrong clarity”.