When I was growing up, Sally Field gave an acceptance speech. People were merciless in their response. Field spoke from the gut of so many women, “You like me! You really, really like me!”
Here, this woman was being honored for a top performance amongst the best in the world. And that is what it boiled down to: she was just happy to have validation that she was liked.
I think, in many ways, this is every woman’s dirty little secret. We will scale Everest, go to any lengths to be liked.
Margaret Atwood said, “The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.”
The buddha spoke to the most difficult karma to go: fame and ill repute.
I think that there is something in women that is beautiful and complex in this world where we aren’t supposed to care. That is, that our essential gift to the world is a fundamental hospitality, a desire to delight, a hope that we can, like a mother who grew up poor, ensure that others might not have to endure what we have.
I think of womanhood in the frame of an Italian woman who wants to feed her family. Her sustenance is their enjoyment. I think that women enjoy “through” others, we have a sympathetic joy.
I see this as neither inferior nor trivial. Nor do I see it as “self-sacrificing.” I see it as one’s heart being placed both in one’s own chest and out in the world. The maternal quality in its purest form, beyond one’s “own.”
It’s denigrated or abused in a world that sees independence as the prize. Don’t buy it. It’s a most beautiful way to love. It’s not weakness, it’s the way things should be.
Honor it and it will evolve from mere accommodation or agreeability to pure reception. Then you will get “yours” in the form that it can be digested.
Anyway, what got me thinking about this is that I read the comments each morning. They are often so very vulnerable. They are often written in a way that I get to feel how various posts affect people. That there is a resonance.
I made a vow years ago that I would do my best to reach, if any existed, people who were like the 18 year old pre-Alan Watts girl with an extra dimension that thought, “It must be me. Something must be very wrong with me.” A me who felt that I was a stranger in a strange land.
Who knows how it happened, some traditions would say karma, some would say grace. But I met a few people who used their power to say to me “No! That’s a gift! You belong! It’s not what is wrong with you, it’s what is right with you!” They spoke to that invisible dimension. I knew that is what I wanted to do.
I just want to say, that each of the comments reaches directly to my heart. Like the Italian mamma, my greatest joy comes when other’s enjoy the meal. You make it that I get to do what I most love: cook for the enjoyment of others.
Thank you.
♥️