Chandrika, I definitely relate to you in this post. It is until some years ago that I started my journey into having space and time for myself. This need for self care would probably sound selfish back home where everything revolves around family and taking care about others. The woods here in Flagstaff have been my space for solitude and mindfulness and I am grateful I can grow to be a better person after each walk, hike or run. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and the recipe.
I'll add, though, that luxuries like time, room, and privacy have often been things that powerful men claim for themselves, while scorning the possibility that people who aren't powerful, or men, might also need them. Private offices kept separate from the women in the typing pool, or the wife who has to write at the kitchen table, or, in prisons, the incarcerated crowded together; private rooms in houses where women and children slept in the same bed; private and elaborate chapels in castles and monasteries, while the rabble worship on the church floor--am I wrong to think that in many cultures, powerful men have fought for and claimed these things without a smidgen of guilt? So that says to me that everyone wants or needs some room and privacy, but that maybe, if we can't have it for one reason or another (no money, no room, large families, whatever), then we tell ourselves and other people that it wasn't really necessary, we never really wanted it, and you shouldn't want it or have if I couldn't have it...or maybe even if I can. Maybe it's easier to say, "I never really needed it, and no one else does either" than "I need something desperately that I know I'm never going to have." And maybe it's easier still if one's fortunate enough to have extroversion as a baseline temperament.
I've wondered about this myself--where the balance is between time-for-oneself and connection-with-others, whether it's selfish to want as much time-to-myself as I do and need it as much as I do, whether it's a personality thing or a cultural thing or a privilege thing. And I don't know. There've always been people who went to great lengths to find time and solitude--hermits, for instance--and I feel a lot of sympathy with those people, while knowing, too, that I probably wouldn't be willing to go to the same lengths. I wish you had a bit more of it, though, you and all mothers. It seems like mothering just shouldn't have to be as hard--such a bone-breaking combination of utterly isolating and utterly destructive of privacy and peace--as so many cultures make it.
Chandrika, I definitely relate to you in this post. It is until some years ago that I started my journey into having space and time for myself. This need for self care would probably sound selfish back home where everything revolves around family and taking care about others. The woods here in Flagstaff have been my space for solitude and mindfulness and I am grateful I can grow to be a better person after each walk, hike or run. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and the recipe.
I'll add, though, that luxuries like time, room, and privacy have often been things that powerful men claim for themselves, while scorning the possibility that people who aren't powerful, or men, might also need them. Private offices kept separate from the women in the typing pool, or the wife who has to write at the kitchen table, or, in prisons, the incarcerated crowded together; private rooms in houses where women and children slept in the same bed; private and elaborate chapels in castles and monasteries, while the rabble worship on the church floor--am I wrong to think that in many cultures, powerful men have fought for and claimed these things without a smidgen of guilt? So that says to me that everyone wants or needs some room and privacy, but that maybe, if we can't have it for one reason or another (no money, no room, large families, whatever), then we tell ourselves and other people that it wasn't really necessary, we never really wanted it, and you shouldn't want it or have if I couldn't have it...or maybe even if I can. Maybe it's easier to say, "I never really needed it, and no one else does either" than "I need something desperately that I know I'm never going to have." And maybe it's easier still if one's fortunate enough to have extroversion as a baseline temperament.
I've wondered about this myself--where the balance is between time-for-oneself and connection-with-others, whether it's selfish to want as much time-to-myself as I do and need it as much as I do, whether it's a personality thing or a cultural thing or a privilege thing. And I don't know. There've always been people who went to great lengths to find time and solitude--hermits, for instance--and I feel a lot of sympathy with those people, while knowing, too, that I probably wouldn't be willing to go to the same lengths. I wish you had a bit more of it, though, you and all mothers. It seems like mothering just shouldn't have to be as hard--such a bone-breaking combination of utterly isolating and utterly destructive of privacy and peace--as so many cultures make it.