You Ought To Read This … Again
What’s lazier than posting a SNL Digital short on your blog?
Reposting something you wrote a little less than a year ago.
It occurred to me this past week as I was racking my brains for bloggy inspiration that it’s hard to think of good stuff to write when you’re knee deep in dirty diapers and saturated nursing pads. This should be obvious by my use of the phrase “good stuff to write”.
Anyway, it also occurred to me that over 90% of the people who read my blog hadn’t even heard of me last year. And, let me tell you, you guys missed some good stuff. For the proud few who were reading this blog in its original form, let’s avoid the term “lazy” and embrace “nostalgia.”
Below, I give you a post dating September 9, 2008 entitled “You Ought To Read This.”
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I was watching television on Sunday afternoon, and heard a foreign policy analyst say something uncharacteristically brilliant.
“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “we need to focus not on what we ought to do, but what we can do.”
Whether his statement holds true with respect to foreign policy, I don’t know. It does seem to be one of those fundamental truths that might apply to my daily life, though.
Sometimes, I need to focus not on what I ought to do, but what I can do.
I have a coffee mug that has a great quote from JFK on it.
Stop smirking, there’s nothing remotely funny about owning a coffee mug that has JFK quotes on it.
It says, “Ideals are like stars. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands…[but] if you choose them as your guides, you can reach your destiny.”
Ideals determine how we decide as individuals and communities what we “ought” to do.
Ideally, polite people always say thanks and please.
Ideally, a parent is always empathetic, and never resorts to power plays to get what they want.
Ideally, a spouse is compassionate, giving and understanding when it comes to their husband or wife.
Ideally, a blog post doesn’t ramble on with numerous examples when trying to make a point.
But ideals are not real, and I tend to forget that.
My coffee mug is right, I can’t touch ideals with my hands. When I think I can be my ideal, instead of recognizing it as an implausible guideline, I find myself teetering on the dangerous path towards apathy and even inaction.
Sometimes, it seems that the whole universe moves against my quest to attain my ideals, and doing what I ought to do to reach them proves totally impossible.
On a day, for example, where I think I can be the ideal parent, the following can (and has) happened.
I conduct a daring rescue of my daughter from her fourth day of preschool only to be handed a pink folder by her teacher which contains twenty minutes worth of homework in it. Instead of sitting her in my lap and letting her recuperate from the trauma of preschool in front of an episode of Diego, I must now sit with her at the breakfast table and do her “math homework.”
Being only three years old and having been at school for six hours, my daughter thinks it is way more fun to play “Pencil Pick Up.” I finally lose it after the fourth round of this game and tell her if she doesn’t start paying attention to me, I will give her a time out.
And that I might, and I’m not proud of this, send her back to school today.
Not my finest moment as a mother.
I ought to have just let her watch TV.
I ought to have laughed at her game of picking up her pencil.
I ought to have understood that she was tired, and she didn’t want to sit.
I ought to have remembered that there is something fundamentally flawed in making a three year old do homework.
But I didn’t.
Days like that make me want to just throw my hands up and scream, “You know what, this is just stupid. I am never going to be able to (end world hunger, make people listen, be a size 2), so I’m just going to (become an investment banker, watch TV, order a Big Mac).”
And, then, instead of doing what I can, I beat myself up because I think I’ll never be the person that I “ought” to be.
But, you know what? A foreign relations analyst on CNN reminded me that doing what I can is just as good as doing what I should.
Because, often, what I can do is all that’s possible.
Trying to be ideal and doing it badly is far better than having no ideals, or worse, doing nothing about them at all. There’s nothing wrong with wanting perfection or trying to achieve perfection as long as you know that perfection is not real.
Real is what you do and why you do it.
29 Responses to You Ought To Read This … Again
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Your year-old words are still wonderful.
They don’t smell at all of decay.
@B.E. Earl, Thank GOD, if there’s one thing I feared about this post it was emitting that “not so fresh” feeling.
You are right. I did not read this post when it originally appeared. Thank you for re-posting.
The ideas here? Pretty much my past year. Accepting that who I am is perfectly fine even though in my mind I often want to be so much more. Like I’d love to solve world hunger and instead content myself that I fed one person on that given day. Because I also know that all of our individual actions add up to something bigger
@Kailyn, I love it when a single comment summarizes a 800 post so eloquently. And by “love” I mean it makes me feel… extraneous.
But it is always an eloquent reminder that I know *I* need, anyway.
More baby pics for future entries, though, please.
@Sybil Law, Yes, yes, you’ll get yer baby pics. I’m trying to prove around here that I am more than a mommy, dammit.
Fine. I’ll just recycle my comment from that post, too:
“I don’t have any ideals. I’m just perfect as is.”
Oh yeah – I realized you never had your archives set up so I set them up for you.
@Avitable, My blog told me to tell you, “You complete me.” And quit telling me how you’ve upgraded stuff on my blog in this public forum. I don’t want people thinking you’re smarter than me at… well, anything.
Ideally, I’d remember if I read this post the first time around or not but I don’t, which is fine because my comment today is probably miles off from what my comment would have been before.
As I was telling you yesterday, I’m letting my ideals shape who I become in this new life of mine but you are right that life doesn’t always allow you to attain them in the way you think you will. Amazingly though, when I can’t reach my ideals, new ones form that are just as good…so the journey? So worth it.
@Hilly, All I have to say, “One day at a time”? Means so much more than just an 80s TV show.
Well said. And if your other archives are as brilliant, repost away.
@SciFi Dad, Oooh, you said my post was brilliant. I’m going to be insufferable today.
I love this post, I think we can all learn from it…
And yes, please do- re-cycle…
xoxo
@Princess of the Universe, Thank you! Your going to be seeing a lot of recycling around here in the next few weeks. Because I love the environment.
I don’t remember reading this the first time.
It has helped me tremendously to read it now.
@Miss Britt, I’m all about helping tremendously.
it’s a good reminder. Sometimes I try to hard to grab them, fall flat on my face and give up on the whole affair- not really a self improvement kind of move.
@fidget, At least you’re trying, you know? Better than being a slacker and not caring. At least, I think so.
You have no idea how much I needed to read this today
Type-A perfectionists who are too hard on ourselves – UNITE!
@Nanna, We need a self help group that is led by someone who is NOT Type A. Otherwise, more than five us in a room would be a disaster.
Its like you planned to recycle this because you knew I was in the middle of a school meltdown. Suddenly my C doesn’t seem quite so bad.
Thanks for posting this.
@Becky, Hmmm, I did decide to repost this after I read your post. Maybe it was subconscious… anyway, I’m glad it helped.
You brought this post back to life just for me, didn’t you? I know you did. Just admit it. You know about my teen trials and tribulations and my pre-teens and their homework issues and peewee football practice and how there isn’t enough time in the day and how I was grumpy with them ALL last night and send each one off to bed because I needed “quiet time” even though they all somehow miraculously at the same time wanted to actually hold a conversation with me. You knew all this so you revived this blog post, didn’t you?
Thank you.
Now please quit stalking me.
Doing what we can do is very closely linked for me to the idea that one person can make a difference. We CAN make a difference by doing what we do. Fantastic post and a very timely reminder that baby steps are still steps that make us move forward. Thanks for this!
Even if this post is a year old, I really needed this today. Today, when all I can think is “I finished my BS in physics so I can mediate toddler fights and clean stinky butts? I could have had a PhD right now, teaching/researching physics and a big university” I needed this.
I love you. Thanks.
@Coal Miner’s Granddaughter, Awww, I love you, too. And, umm, cleaning stinky butts and mediating toddler fights is hard and makes getting a PhD look like a cake walk. As you well know.
@Selma, You’re very welcome, and yes, I agree that those ideas are closely linked.
@Twinkie, Hahahaha, OMG, I laughed so hard at that last line thatI forgot what I was going to say.
Great post, Faiqa. Reminded me of this Onion article I used with my kids in conjunction with The Catcher in the Rye.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40520