This morning, I read a very interesting
piece on why women can't have it all. An insightful look into the
standards of successful business women, and the sacrifices they make
in order to obtain that level of career success. It is very true
that men make family sacrifices as well, but it is seen more
acceptable to ignore your family as a man in pursuit of a career.
What are we really doing then admiring and promoting those people
willing to sacrifice their family time in order to help the masses?
Maybe if our leaders really were honest about the struggles between
family and work we would be able to make economic and political
changes that both promote and value family, a concept that is being
quickly misconstrued and tarnished.
It is popular for teenagers to start to
hate their parents and treat them with disrespects, siblings
squabble, parents work crazy hours in order to assure the happiness
of their children, only to hand their children off to full time care.
It's a crazy concept. Work hard so you can pursuit
happiness...later. I posted that article on Facebook, and the first
comment was, you're 22, who cares?
Well I feel it's fairly obvious I
wouldn't have spend an hour reading a 13 page article and then
posting it if I didn't care, so to answer the question, I care.
Perhaps the real question meant to be asked was WHY do you care. And
while still I feel on the verge of being rude, I am more then happy
to answer that question to the best of my ability. Although there is
no concrete reason as to why someone cares about multiple issues,
while the people next door wake up and do drugs and don't care about
anything other then their fix. That's humans.
Anyways, I come from an interesting
line of New Englanders. There are Boston contractors, Professors,
women's self-esteem, doctors, Ivy Leagues, Wall street workers,
Dentists, 15 year old mothers and more in my family. There's a
strong New England white collar mindset. The concept of the pursuit
of happiness is closely linked to the pursuit of property. Success
is quite often seen as the money you make. I am lucky at my 22 years
of age to see all sorts of people. I have traveled more then most
people do in their life to more places then most. I have seen
cultures, and people, and values, and priorities. I have conversed
with people who control more money then small countries, and shredded
skateparks barefoot with bros who have never gone a day past twelve
without the Mary Jane.
So that's my history, and an insight
into experience, but it still doesn't answer the question why do I
care. I suppose one of the reason's is I’m currently making
decisions about my own careers. I am a skier, but I won't stay a
professional level skier forever, do I want to go the route of a
standard career? Do I want to go into corporate? Or Do I want stay
ski based, work around the industry, or do I want to live on the
beach and teach fitness and gymnastics? Is it that you're saying 22
is to young to think about those things? Well my family started
asking me at 14 about those questions. And I would rather think about
them now, and actually acnowledge and analyze my option rather then
get so far down a road I wake up and realize I didn't live the way I
wanted.
Or that you don't think there's any
reason to plan out your life, that you should just live and chill and
be real. I have a sister who thinks that way, and I vacillate back
and forth. See, I have too many thoughts to just sit and chill. As
a little girl after the twin towers and before the Iraq war I made
place mats and stood at the end of the road selling them and
explaining why we shouldn't go into that war. You can't very well go
from reading college books at 12 to just not giving a shit. Trust
me, I tried, and that's why it was so unnatural. I suppose if you
really don't give a shit it's easy to act like you don't give a shit,
but if you give a lot of shits about a lot of things, then you can't
just be indifferent.
So I care. I care about political
tensions, I love to read, and I'm a total dork when it comes to
schooling. I have a high speed memory, and love learning. But I
also love my happiness. I hate long hours inside, inflexible
schedules and bosses. So ya, I am trying to figure out the course
and the road I would like to take with my life. I am currently
walking down multiple roads simultaneously, and I am happy with that.
I will continue to care about issues,
it's just not going away, and I quite honestly don't have to justify
why I care, in fact maybe more people should be asking themselves why
they don't care? Why is it so cool to not care about anything, but
simultaneously care about everything? Care about your style, how you
are portrayed being seen as cool, obsessing about social media, cars,
celebrities, but yet making sure you don't care about anything that
could be meaningful and stressful. We have a society that promotes
watching little girls in pageants, yet it's uncool to actually talk
about the things you are about. So this is my attempt at answering
why I care, and let me ask you now, why don't you care?
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