The Choices We Make

I took the day off. After rereading yesterday's post, I figured I needed it. So it's 3:28 pm on Wednesday afternoon and I'm sitting back, eating Jelly Bellies and listening to the rain and Haydn's Symphony No. 88 in G Major, and the occasional burst of Italian from my landlady and landlord. They are standing on their back porch, surveying the rain-splotched, concrete-covered area between their home and the rear apartment we rent, a space they somehow manage to transform into a flourishing, flowering urban garden each spring.
Of course, I've already gone to the gym, run some errands, worked on my taxes, researched a book idea, emailed my editor three times, and finished up and filed my freelance piece. (And I wonder why I get stressed out?)
I'm beginning to think I've got to relearn how to relax. How have I gotten to the point where I'm having anxiety attacks about motherhood--before I'm even pregnant?!
A good friend of mine (who I hope doesn't mind me repeating her words), told me that she'd read the "mommy madness" story too--and had a completely different reaction to it. "I thought, all those women were driving themselves crazy--for what?" she wrote me in an email.
Good question, I thought. Exactly whose expectations are we trying to live up to? And why do we act as if we're in it alone when we have a husband and the support of friends and family? Why do view motherhood as something we must learn to master--as if it were a game of golf, or a challenging work assignment--rather than the amazing and predictably unpredictable experience it is? Why do we worry about preschool (as Malcolm pointed out) before our baby is even born? (Well, in part because in NYC, it is not unusual for parents to add their unborn child's name to sometimes years-long waiting lists at the handful of public preschools...then again, the fact that I've come to accept that as normal is a little worriesome).
"I've learned to take it one day at a time," my friend added, and advised me to do the same. "It's about choices."
Yes, it's hard for someone in America to complain too much about their current circumstances when we have the freedom to choose where we live/work/play, who we marry, and how we spend our money (or use our credit cards).
I could live almost anywhere (hell, I've lived in 10 different cities already). I choose to live in NYC. I could work in PR and make a lot more (and don't think I haven't been tempted). But I choose to work in journalism instead. I've even chosen, lobbied for and gotten the beat I cover. I know how fortunate I am to have the friends/husband/job/life I do. So why can't I just relax and enjoy them? Am I afraid that if I take the time to enjoy what I have already, I won't want more? That if I don't review my goals--and how to reach them--every day, I might never achieve them? Or is it just that the bar keeps getting higher?
I might be perfectly happy with my salary--if we didn't live in a city where 500-square-foot studios sell for nearly $1 million. I might be happy with my job--if I had gotten the promotion and raise I'd expected or hadn't accepted the position with the expectation that it would turn into something it hasn't. I might be happier with my apartment--if I knew I could afford to buy it now (or even fully furnish it).
My husband and I do ask ourselves sometimes: For what? For what do we stay here and struggle? Just to prove that we can? Or is it the hope that if we stay and struggle, one day we'll find success (and we'll be able to answer the "For what?" definitively)? Why don't we go somewhere else where the homes cost less and jobs come with less stress? But always, we talk ourselves back to NYC. Because we truly love this city. And it is our home. And for now, at least, it's worth the trade-offs and the struggles.
There's a passage in "Reading Lolita in Tehran" in which the author, Azar Nafisi, contemplates whether she should leave Iran. Her husband argues that they should stay. I love this country, he tells her. This is our home. They should stay as a form of resistance against an oppressive regime "to show that we are not out-maneuvered."
Besides, Azar adds as she thinks about the life they have created in Tehran, it's much harder to dismantle their world and to rebuild it somewhere else. "I guess the point is we all have to make our own choices according to our potentials and limitations," she adds.
On that day, Nafisi and her husband chose to stay. But they would leave Iran less than two years later and come to America, where she would publish a best-selling book about her life in Iran. So, in the end, both choices made sense. If she didn't move to America, she might not have been able to publish the book. But if she hadn't stayed in Tehran, she wouldn't have been able to write the book.