How personal is the political?
Looking back on writers like Anais Nin and the women's movement of the late sixties and into the seventies, a common mantra was the personal is political and if you examine the personal closely enough, you find the common humanity of all.
As I watch the media staged events that are the campaign for president of the United States, I've started to reframe my own life. For the last nine and a half years, I've been looking at all my problems as my own personal failure to be able to juggle full time work, full time caregiving, and part time projects such as writing, environmental activism not to mention a social life. But listening to some of the speeches floating around, I am beginning to wonder, if there might not be a balance that comes from the direction the President is supposed to provide our country. So I wonder, if for the last eight years we'd had a president who wasn't a spoiled little rich brat, maybe somehow my life would be easier.
Maybe, a descent paying 75% job would be available, because in this job market, it's either work fifty hours a week at a livable wage or work thirty hours a week at the same wage I earned in nineteen eighty. Maybe, there would be health care without a co-pay for calling your doctor on the phone. Maybe, the caregiving burden I am taking off the government's back would be recognized for something - either earnings towards my own retirement or caregiving subsidies. Maybe I would be making more in real terms now than I was twenty five years ago. Maybe we would have had a president who was smarter than me and could come up with ways to lift a burden placed on my shoulders by the failed health care systems.
Or maybe not. Maybe I'm to blame. After all, I could just work and care for my mom, not try to save a creek or write a novel or organize my community. Maybe if I was happy working for a corporation so the CEO could vacation in the Bahamas every year, I wouldn't feel so frustrated with my options.
Unfortunately, I'm one of those crack pot dreamers who thinks that there is a way for people to live fulfilling lives, love and be loved, to follow their bliss and still support themselves, an
d that maybe, just maybe, my hard work will help someone else someday, somehow. That's been an unpopular belief these last eight years. I hope it won't be forever.
To my sister who blazed that trail ~~ RIP Shirley Chisholm ~~ you will not be forgotten. And to all those who have come since, don't forget whose shoulders you're standing on.
As I watch the media staged events that are the campaign for president of the United States, I've started to reframe my own life. For the last nine and a half years, I've been looking at all my problems as my own personal failure to be able to juggle full time work, full time caregiving, and part time projects such as writing, environmental activism not to mention a social life. But listening to some of the speeches floating around, I am beginning to wonder, if there might not be a balance that comes from the direction the President is supposed to provide our country. So I wonder, if for the last eight years we'd had a president who wasn't a spoiled little rich brat, maybe somehow my life would be easier.
Maybe, a descent paying 75% job would be available, because in this job market, it's either work fifty hours a week at a livable wage or work thirty hours a week at the same wage I earned in nineteen eighty. Maybe, there would be health care without a co-pay for calling your doctor on the phone. Maybe, the caregiving burden I am taking off the government's back would be recognized for something - either earnings towards my own retirement or caregiving subsidies. Maybe I would be making more in real terms now than I was twenty five years ago. Maybe we would have had a president who was smarter than me and could come up with ways to lift a burden placed on my shoulders by the failed health care systems.
Or maybe not. Maybe I'm to blame. After all, I could just work and care for my mom, not try to save a creek or write a novel or organize my community. Maybe if I was happy working for a corporation so the CEO could vacation in the Bahamas every year, I wouldn't feel so frustrated with my options.
Unfortunately, I'm one of those crack pot dreamers who thinks that there is a way for people to live fulfilling lives, love and be loved, to follow their bliss and still support themselves, an
d that maybe, just maybe, my hard work will help someone else someday, somehow. That's been an unpopular belief these last eight years. I hope it won't be forever.To my sister who blazed that trail ~~ RIP Shirley Chisholm ~~ you will not be forgotten. And to all those who have come since, don't forget whose shoulders you're standing on.
Labels: Caregiving, Government
posted by Karin Zirk at
8:00 PM
2 Comments:
Karin your hard work, and your writing here and on agr, help me every day to stay sure that another world really is possible. Thank you so much.
I've been a caregiver 13 years now---five for my dad who had dementia and lung cancer and eight for my husband who is wheelchair bound and lost his language to a stroke. One thing I know for sure about caregiving is that you absolutely must have something in your life that feeds your soul. It's sound like you have found that in your writing and community service. Make sure that you're always living in the moment of whatever you're doing at the time. It does get easier to balance life needs and life wants when you can do that.
Jean
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