MY TAKE
EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE EVERY DAY
“We women have been programmed for millennia to discount ourselves for the functions we do with silent efficiency days in and days out.” Image credit: RDNE STOCK PROJECT on Pexels.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
There are etiquette columns devoted to how to turn down invitations – entire books on how to navigate the territory lined with social faux pas.
In essence, the advice boils down to: Convey thanks for the invitation, decline clearly, and provide a brief, honest reason. But what if “honest” won’t cut it? What if honest is admitting that one is just too darn tired of the merry go round and is desperate for a quiet evening?
Statistics Canada data show an increase in both active and passive leisure for women after the ages of 35 to 44.
Not the women I know! Not if we are talking about after work or post-retirement “duties”. Those appear to multiply exponentially.
Take the case of my friend in India who says she thought life would become easier when she took early retirement. On the contrary, she finds herself busier than ever.
Because, at least earlier, she had the advantage of a structured day, of a work routine that involved a fair amount of travel. Now, she finds it well nigh impossible to turn down invitations to weddings or family events – in other cities – because the implication is that as a retiree, she’s got all the time in the world.
Over the past several weeks and months, many of the women in my circle of family, friends, work acquaintances and neighbours have all talked about feeling run off their feet, feeling run down. Not just with the chores and routine responsibilities of home and work, but with finding no time for themselves between all of the events and get-togethers they feel obliged to attend.
Some are work-related, some community events, and many are family events.
A friend who is busy with a packed work schedule and volunteer roles, says she cannot remember what she’s been so busy with and would find it hard to list the reasons if asked to do so, but busy she is. A young mother looking after multiple generations says she has no idea where the month goes. “I just flip the page on the calendar to a new month and before I know it, it’s time to flip again,” she says with a rueful laugh.
When what began as a hoped-for quiet month devolved into a frenetic one, my husband sat me down and said if I was feeling like it was a chore – and boy, oh boy, did I feel like that! – then the only thing to do was to rationalize. To excuse ourselves from a few. No point in killing ourselves in the line of duty as by this time it wasn’t feeling like fun activities at all. My issue was that it’s hard to “rationalize” drastically without coming across as churlish when most of the invites were for individual events. It’s not like we could say, “Well, we came to the one on Saturday, so we’re going to skip Sunday”. What we did the day before or had to do the following day had no bearing on the one on any particular day.
I reached out for help from another quarter. My mother’s friend – a very pragmatic lady who has enjoyed a successful career and now continues to volunteer. She has always been able to help me sort things through in my head.
How does she deal with all her time commitments? How does she prioritize, without putting someone off, or worse, feeling guilty?
She came to the rescue in her trademark, no-nonsense manner:
“We women have been programmed for millennia to discount ourselves for the functions we do with silent efficiency days in and days out – housekeeping, child rearing, maintaining family and social relationships, caring for elders and starting with my generation, excelling in professional work. We handled the quintessential (and often male) question, ‘What do you do all day sitting at home?’ by discounting ourselves.
“We do not even acknowledge it to ourselves. So when we stop to think what we did all day, we genuinely cannot list these because we ourselves do not consider any of these as work either.
“These routine tasks are deadly repetitive, bring no pleasure or sense of achievement, so we really cannot give them the prestige of ‘doing’ them. Everybody does all these every day, so what’s the big deal? It is time we confront this societal hoax that is not helping us at all.
“We need to take a deep look at the issue to rescue ourselves from the scratchy feelings of self pity and worthlessness.”
She also had an observation to make, which stopped me in my tracks. “You must be enjoying this frenetic life at some level, or you would not do it.”
Am I enjoying getting stressed over yet another outing on yet another weekend while my garden suffers from neglect?
While I mull over whether I feel virtuous, making myself available when I really don’t have the time, I am also reminded of what my dear friend and neighbour Dorothy was fond of repeating. “Remember, honey, you are just one woman, not the whole Salvation Army.”
One of my friends, who recently took up journalling, had resolved to do an overview of her life, to write down where she felt she was with her goals, the ones she had met, the things she failed to do, and so on.
“That was last December,” she says. “And now we are in, what, September?”
Wise women, who all know how important it is to slow down, who share tips on how to do so with others in the same boat.
And yet, I can’t help wondering, if what another friend says is equally true: “We get used to being everything to everyone all the time. Only we can stop.”
Studies extol the virtues of down time, tell us how important making time for leisure is for physical, mental and emotional health. And yet, all of us are far from being ladies of leisure.