natan, my grade dean and all-around teacher crush (please, he's shomer negiah, married and has 4 kids), said today at the conclusion of seminar to "live your life as if it were an epic." having been a lit major at yu, natan teaches (and has taught) about seeing tanach as epic poetry -- think homer's the iliad and the odyssey. he's obsessed with fantasy genre and all things that fall under its subsets, including dragons, knights, swordfights and destiny.
so today, to close seminar, natan spoke about destiny (in hasidic judaism, b'sheret -- but he didn't really call it that, for the most part he just called it destiny). he said that in a good epic, each character has a destiny. this pretty much falls into my basic philosophy that everything-happens-for-a-reason (that's what I think god, per se, is) but it was interesting to hear natan talk about it nonetheless. anyway, this whole destiny thing is pretty often overlooked (give or take politics & sports) but each character in an epic tale/novel has a destiny -- a role to fill. again, like I think, it doesn't really matter how said character goes about fulfilling this role, rather that he or she meets the end goal and desired outcome.
that being said, natan's basic philosophy was that life should be lived as an epic, meaning that each of us has a role. not self-aggrandizement, but empowerment. we each can affect change, can cause things to happen, can make a difference -- provided we work for it. and that got me to thinking: I may not care so much about israel as a homeland, as something I can really, truly, passionately fight for, I may not care so much about global warming, I may not care so much about the food industry. so I challenged myself to head back to square one. what do I care about? and, how can I create change in that specific sector? how can I be empowered and take action for something I care about?
this year I've spent a lot of time exploring feminism and the empowerment of women. that is something I care about. that is something I want to focus my time on. I think that far too often women are submissive, become caretakers (because we're more "compassionate" and "caring" apparently -- two words I would most certainly not use to describe myself, nor would I expect others to apply them to me), lose sight of their hopes and goals and dreams to satisfy the needs of others. and while some women are happy with this, I refuse to believe that the majority of women are. the fact that I can predict that my (very far in the) future marriage will most likely fail because I know now that I want to be the breadwinner in the family is a sad truth. and why is it that society has to be that way? or that relationships have to be run that way? because it's a societal norm.
well isn't that strange? not really at all considering that we live in a society that has oppressed women, limited rights and refused to see them as full equals for many hundreds of years. (kind of humorous, actually, that communism, that whole "red scare" nonsense gave women more rights than american democracy did...) and now I want to fight back because I care. I don't want a failed marriage (when & if I do get married), I don't want to hear anti-feminist slurs or anti-sexual openness for women. I'm just sick of it. I know that the workplace has been so heavily monitored by the government that women are able to make it in the workplace, but it simply shouldn't be that a woman has to choose between a successful career or a successful marriage.
so how do I live my life as an epic? how do I affect change for women who have to fight societal norms? how do I prove that being the breadwinner, or simply high-powered, and having a successful marriage are not mutually exclusive and can, really, coexist? I need to take action. I need to get my point across. I need to make others see the beauty of this situation, whether a woman is a self-declared feminist or not. it's time that I do my part in making this situation fair because, in the end, it IS a generational issue. I have been taught to be empowered, but to also be a mother. if society is preaching an impossibility than I need to remedy that. and that is me living my life as if it were an epic.
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