Over the last few days, I’ve been collecting stories and painting women who rose above the ordinary in their lives. Quite honestly, I felt a little ashamed from time to time, that I didn’t already know their names or what they had accomplished. If I could, I listened to YouTube biographies and interviews, and marveled at their perseverance in face of obstacles.
My mailbox is flooded with so many others I have yet to get to know. I could line up paintings, and stack them to the ceiling in a Grand Salon all by myself and still not be done. That look in their eyes, the set of jaw. With and without makeup, hair styled or covered. And I imagine girls getting to see icons in their fields, and feeling inspired by their success.
And yet, I can’t help but wonder if we have taught our children to fail successfully. To accept flaws and faults and weaknesses, to be embarrassed in front of the whole world. To know when one is defeated and to be able to admit it, look for and ask for help. Sometimes I feel we are so eager to show what can be done by a few that we gloss over the many that tried.
I know I learned the lesson of having those days when I wasn’t doing well late in my thirties. Before that, I was that achiever who believed the world was made of two kinds of people. The ones who wanted success and the others. My father used to tell me that with every exam I took, 90% of my colleagues were destined to fade away into that dark nothing, never to be heard from again. So within me was that unacknowledged fear of dissolving, of not being important enough to have choices, of not having the worth to dream and want.
Except that with my stumble with med school, I could see I was getting unhooked from that fast track. With infertility, I was barren at thirty. With every year that I had to disengage from my hard won MBA taking care of two precious babies, I fell further and further behind. I didn’t know how to handle it, and felt I truly was in a dark nothingness as a person. No tests to take, no achievements to look forward to, no trophies to polish.
It was hard to join work having lost about ten years of peak productivity. I learned humility and dogged perseverance. The arrogance of what I had achieved in the first 22 years of life was broken down, and I learned how to not be a “winner”.
I know there are a few of you who will chuckle because you did get a glimpse of my old spirit while I shepherded the girls to their activities. Ironically I learned how to be there for the one that didn’t win, how to celebrate effort and hard work. How to dismiss the importance of certificates while my own precious file of school certificates sat guiltily in my desk.
The flaming breakdown of the last three years was further humiliation as I finally encountered something I could not game, or manage or win. Frankly, I didn’t want to. Sometimes it is better to walk away. I learned that too. Sometimes it’s better to get to know the cracks and faults that make up your life. Become comfortable with the idea that you aren’t powerful, or successful or a winner. Sometimes all you can do is set your shoulders, start with ground principles and start walking. Ask for help. Accept sympathy. Be pitied. Be laughed at. Gossiped about. Life doesn’t end.
All the things you thought are inescapably essential, just aren’t. And that too is a kind of strength that we need to show our kids. The world isn’t made up of glossy Facebook pictures. You have to decide what is important to you, in your life. And be true to that. Everything else can be lost.
I don’t know how to paint fallibility. Though in the faces and stories of all these women, you see the look of dogged stubbornness. You know they tasted defeat, fell, broke, were humiliated. I bet there were days they wanted to give up. To be a failure and then to try to figure out other ways of getting to your goal, that is a real life skill. To forgive yourself if you made a major mistake, to accept the setback as part of achieving. I want to celebrate that. Because, dayum that lesson was hard!!! #alakwrites #alkaverse
