Women Don’t Have to Get the Blues
Maureen Dowd thinks women are, in general, unhappy. In her op-ed piece which has been wending its way around the Internet recently (“Blue is the New Black”), she writes:
But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?
According to the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.
She then goes on to quote Arianna Huffington, who claims that women around the world are in a funk, and says:
When women stepped into male-dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.
Well, there’s the problem. This isn’t a woman problem, per se. We are not talking about a societal problem; we are talking about a self-worth problem that some women have given themselves. This is what happens when you try to define yourself by something that you are not. You are not your job, your kids, your husband. You should not be defined by any of those things. Any woman who identifies herself as a mother, wife, or lawyer puts herself in a position to be unhappy because she is not living for herself. I’m not saying women should lead utterly self-centered lives. I am saying that we should define ourselves as more than the things we do that involve other people.
Those things come with built-in expectations. Are you a good mother? A good wife? A great lawyer? We don’t want to just tell the world that we’re mothers; we want to compare ourselves to other mothers and wives and people in our chosen field. We want to say we’re successful at those things and that we’re fulfilled and happy. It’s a never-ending battle to meet that pinnacle of perfection that we set up for ourselves and each other.
We are not our jobs. We are not our children or our dinner parties.
In order to find happiness, a woman needs to define herself as a singular person, not someone who is part of a package deal. Women need to ask themselves the following questions. What do I do aside from parenting, work, going to school, and being a partner? Do I have a hobby? Do I try to do anything that brings happiness to just myself or am I spending every waking hour of my life making other people happy?
My opinion is that there is a big difference between identity and identification. More in the attached essay.
excerpt:
“Who are we?
However cliche this sounds, it speaks of a gap in our knowledge today. When I say “I am” what do I refer to? The body, the brain, the mind, the name, the citizenship or do I refer to something is beyond these layers of convention?”
Tell me what you think
“…modern women are increasingly miserable,” if they read Dowd. There are not enough drugs in the world to help that sour plagiarist put two positive thoughts together.
Dowd is lost in ignorance. It’s not just a woman thing, it’s a human thing. For most of us no matter how good it gets, the unexamined mind will conclude it’s not good enough. Taming the mind is the only solution. Spiritual practices are designed for this, developed through centuries of practice. They free up the joy and loving kindness that resides in most of us. Psychology generally treats symptoms, not the root causes of self inflicted misery.
I’m not really a sexist but maybe the reason why women are unhappy is because their current role in Western society is unnatural? Too much rejection of the natural feminine role in my opinion. For many thousands of years women looked after children as their primary responsibility while the men brought home the food. That’s why men probably would be more depressed if suddenly a lot of them became stay at home dads. It’s unnatural for a man not to be productive. I think socially Western Civilization has gotten a bit out of whack since the late 1960s. I’m not saying women shouldn’t be able to do whatever they want. But at the very least we could stop glamorizing and encouraging non-traditional female traits like single motherhood, homosexuality, fear of domestic responsibilities, etc. Seems like everyone is a bisexual emo these days.
Certainly a woman, i.e. Maureen Dowd is getting miserable. Her column has become an embarassment. Her publication is on life support. The old girls (both Maureen and the Gray Lady) are slipping into senescence. Pretty soon Ms. Dowdy will be on the B list. Horror of horrors. No more mingling with the rich and thoughtless. And she doesn’t even have a strong male companion to lean on. It’s too late now, Maureen. The pity.
I posit the exact opposite.
Women are unhappy because they are eternally out to please themselves. The unfortunate problem is that they are more often than not, highly displeased with themselves.
Makeup, hair color, fickle fashion, weight, just being female… the list is exhausting to go through. Women (in general, I have known healthy happy well adjusted women all of my life) seem to be unhappy, chiefly because they despise themselves.
You give yourself away when you use the PC language of the time. It is not a “partner” (that is a legal definition for someone who has a fiduciary corporate business relationship with you.) If you are a woman, then it is “husband”, if you are a man then it is “wife”. Even if you are slightly PC being gender neutral (gender is a linguistic term relating to whether a word is masculine or feminine. It is not properly a descriptor of one’s sex.) then “spouse” is acceptable.
A life well lived is one not lived FOR one’s self. It is lived for the benefit of others. If you have a wife, then a successful marriage means devoting 100% of one’s efforts towards supporting and loving your wife. If your family is complete and you have children, then 100% of your efforts must go to the love and support of your wife and your children.
Only in accepting that reality will one ever truly be happy. You see, you cannot MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY. You have to BE happy doing your best loving and caring for those around you.
It’s the foundational principle of Christianity, it is the first principle taught by Jesus of Nazareth. It is the fundamental secret of true happiness. Give all and ask for nothing in return. The paradox is that you will receive EVERYTHING in return for having done so.
The joy of seeing my son walk across the stage to receive his diploma and knowing all of the sacrifices behind that act, meant infinitely more to me than any gee-gaw or benefit that I bestowed upon myself.
Stop looking in the mirror for happiness. It isn’t there.
Cheers,
The Mighty Fahvaag
Close, but no bananas. So, I shouldn’t define myself by the fact that I am a wife, but I should define myself by the fact that I take pictures and read books? I know maybe I’m simplifying what the author is saying, but I just think the article missed the mark a bit.
I agree that at issue is a self-worth problem that comes from comparison, high expectations (from yourself or others), and defining yourself by what you do. But I’d argue it’s not hobbies that help us have value. It’s love. So, here’s what works for me: I do not have value because I read books, or knit, or take pictures, or have a job I love, or don’t have a job I love. I have value in that I am loved by my Creator. That’s the source where it all starts. And then by extension, I find value and contentment in the love of the family and friends that He gave me. And then, maybe even by the talents and personality He gave me that help make me who I am and that are reflected in the career, hobbies, etc. that I choose.
The further women get from the One who made them and loves them—flaws and all—the more miserable they will continue to be.
I live each day based on what my family and I need to make our lives better. I stopped worrying about how we compare to others long ago. When I realized that chasing after someone else’s dream didn’t make me happy, I decided being true to myself was the ticket. Now I knit with friends, support my kids in their sporting events, make our home comfortable and “lived in”, and enjoy a wonderful relationship with my husband. I judge the things I do based on the pleasure and value they add to my life. I do not judge the things I do on the approval of others. It just comes down to living your own life, and not trying to copy someone else’s.
Ms. Catalano, Basically what you are telling women is to trade one type of self-centeredness for another. What women (and men) need most is relationship and connectedness. Maureen Dowd is miserable because she is a self-isolated, self-absorbed, self-centered, self-important shrew. She has spent her whole life “nurturing” herself.
And yes, men did win the sexual revolution. They get the milk for free, have no responsibility for the consequences (it’s the woman’s “choice”), and, in the name of abortion, women defend a man’s right to walk away (see Bill Clinton). Give a man the chance to be irresponsible and he will usually take it. No wonder Dowd is miserable.
Sorry, as a husband of a professional, father of 3, homeowner (thus also repairman), traveler, lawyer, I disagree with the author – each of these things define me; I have chosen to be these things; I chose them because they generally make me happy (anyone expecting happiness from all things at all times is just a child). As a spouse and parent you must, in large part, live for those others. Your spouse will do the same for you and your children will do it for their children. This is good.
Dowd needs to go work in a pediatric aids clinic or cancer ward for six months to gain some perspective.
Maureen Dowd, like anyone really gives a cr*p about that 70′s – 80′s loser.
You really thought you knew it all, & look at your miserable ass now…
It’s all downhill from here baby! enjoy the ride…..
There’s precious little room for having a laugh in Maureen Dowd’s dreary world. Also she writes as if she has the right to speak for all women, when she’s really speaking for herself.
I’ve got a piece at this site on a related subject: Depression is Not a Feminist Issue.
One way modern women can avoid being miserable—they can stop reading twits like Maureen Dowd, and Arianna, “I want to be Queen of the US,” Huffington.
They’ll be even happier if they cut out Oprah, the View, Lifetime channel and idiot shows like “The Real Desperate Housewives of Laguna/New York/Idaho Wherever.”
What? What would we watch on Thursdays without the Desperate Housewives? You mean this isn’t how real housewives live?
“women are not what the do” hmm, they ARE what they DO, otherwise how could they have an idea of what they ARE ?
The thing is most of the people don’t like to be alone, finding the soul mate is a remnent occupation, though often women chose to be alone, when they can afford it, while they discovered that the soul mate they thought they had married, wasn’t like in their dream.
Though if they got erroned on their first choice, it isn’t rare that their 2nd, 3rd choice will not be a more lucky decision.
When you arrest your decision on someone, you have to perceive through the appearence, kind of 6th sense or intuition how the everyday life with “him” will be, if you are ready to accept your companion defaults…
“If life’s a bowl of cherries, why am I in the pits?”
Erma Bomber, God rest her soul.
I think it is absolutely normal to feel the blues once in a while. After all didn’t they name a whole genre after that feeling? Life is not easy and to acknowledge that is just a truth. If we don’t wallow in it or pretend we are the only ones experiencing the blues, or if we begin to entertain thoughts of harm to ourselves or others, than in my opinion it is to be expected in life.
The world becomes alarmed when women become too sad or unhappy because we have been placed in the box where woman feed, woman feels, woman fixes, woman makes better. Let us recharge our batteries for the love of Pete and we will be back again, hoping for the best, loving, sharing, healing, and hopefully laughing.
Don’t let them take your sense of humor away ladies. Life’s a bowl of cherries and sometimes we are in the pits, and sometimes we laugh and sometimes we cry and most times we go on.
In the constitution is reads that we have the right to pursue happiness. Sometimes I think we just exhaust ourselves in the pursuit, and when we stopp long enough to take stock, it could be found in the most unexpected places.
Is anyone else getting sick of being examined and polled, poked and prodded? I get the feeling their doing it with our kids too. Always analyzing always trying to put us in little boxes and lump us together. This is why your sad, this is why your unfulfilled. I think the ways of the world are a good enough reason to be unhappy. There are many bad things going on, many bad people, and much suffering. It’s a frickin miracle we are as happy as we are and they might want to examine people who smile too much.
I listen to some of these married women complain about their husbands, their kids, their lack of time due to their jobs and I laugh to myself. As a single woman over 35 who has been alone all my adult life, these women will most likely never face a day in their lives completely alone. They live with unconditional love through their children. They will have left this world with something living on after them. If their marriage is good, they have someone to comfort them, to lean on (and vice versa) and to know that they have loved and been loved. Sure, it’s not perfect, but I would trade places with them in a heartbeat.
So women are unhappy? As compared to men who are happy? Or as compared to a Labrador retriever? You know, life is a bitch, and then you die. My advice….stop trying so hard to be happy, and enjoy yourself. Be a nice person. Be polite. Set reasonable goals. Have a family (yes, yes, even more problems and work). Try not to think too much. You’re never going to get a Nobel Prize, so relax. otherwise, continue to whine and moan.
MARIE CLAUDE:
Women are searching for dreams and soul mates? Maybe that is the problem. It makes more sense to be on the lookout for a nice guy, clean, thoughtful, fun to be with, pleasant, who cleans up after himself and remembers to put the toilet seat down. Dreams are for little children and psychiatrists. And I have no clue what the phrase ‘soul mate’ means. Life is not a fantasy despite Hollywood’s best effort to convince us of that. one bit of advice; when you type on your comoputer keyboard, don’t wear mittens.
Why not be depressed? The prospect of 36 more months of inept, misguided evil is more than most Americans–male or female–can take.
To Mrs. Dowd and all the unhappy liberal women of these earth:
I am happy because I am a woman! I am Blessed
I am happy because I am a mom and I never had an Abortion or did drugs!
I am happy because I am married for 25 years to the most amazing husband. Thank you G-D!
I am happy because I have wonderful daughters. Thank you G-D!
I am happy because I believe in God!
I am happy because I take responsability for my actions!
Thank you to my parents for giving me birth!
Have a wonderful and Blessed day and don’t forget to pray.
Love yourself just the way you are because G-D wanted you this way.
Mingus, you are so right. After I lost my job, I was miserable. Then, I started searching the net for stories like this, job ideas and so on. Now, I have a little home business, time to be with my kids, go to the gym, see friend and I am really happy.
PS. I also got hooked to those freebie sites, and there are so many good offers out there. Ladies, you should check it one out – $1000 of free cash I just got yesterday: http://www.mediancs.com/rd_p?p=192462&t=9534&a=25081-scash&gift=25081
I don’t believe happiness is an experience that can be quantified. It is something that is a momentary condition of ones reality.
It seems more apparent on reflection than when its actually happening. It is elusive and spontaneous. It seems closely tied to self satisfaction and achievement, yet it is much more than that.
I do not think Maureen Dowd will find happiness in her life because she is seeking things that do not yield happiness. One can only reap what one sows.
Carla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulmate
I have no idea of what mittens are for, it’s still 22°C here
Quite often the reason why modern women get divorced is so that they can live for themselves. They don’t know that it is only a healthy balance which will make them happy. I’ve never met a modern woman who swung the other way who was happy. Sure, she got free to do for herself, but she destroyed the stability, especially financial stability, of her previous lifestyle and found herself older, working harder, all to have a little “me time.”
Women would have been better of doing a third way between the feminist drive into the workplace and traditional marriage: get married young, raise their kids to their teenage years and then go off to work.
Call it a professional bias, but I don’t understand why most women would feel unfulfilled by raising their children while they’re young, but fulfilled by doing drudge work in a corporate setting.
MARIE CLAUDE
Damn that global warming!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By the way, have you tried to reduce your carbon footprint? I have. Normally I wear a size eight shoe, but lately I’ve been buying only sevens. They pinch a bit, but if it helps to save the planet, what the hey.
Close but you are not addressing what women by some measure of choice or expectation take on that men do not. My biggest source of unhappiness (well educated wife, mother, daughter, part time employee) is not my roles and responsibilities but the fact that the men in my life (husband, brother, father) do not have to balance their roles and responsibilities the same way I do. Even though my husband does a really good job helping with the house and kids and I very much appreciate that, it is secondary to his primary work while my work and pleasurable activities always come down to how I accommodate them with my care giver responsibilities. That was my choice when they were babies and it was great but as time goes on that wears thin and is hard to change. My brother does very little to help with our elderly parents so it’s either I help or they have no one. That is a source of fury frankly particularly since he has no kids and he is never criticized for this. In the end, it’s not my roles and responsibilities that make me unhappy but the comparison that men just have more freedom and choices and get more benefits from their relationships without as much sacrifice.
Women are unhappy because they are not selfish enough?
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
After all, don’t we all want to be rid of those pesky kids, jobs, family members who all make unreasonable demands on us and deprive us of writing poetry to ourselves, pursuing our muse, having more time for introspection.
Yes, we need to be more self-centered. That’s the ticket to true and lasting happiness.
Good grief!
I know most women start enjoying their lives after 45. This is when the competition over looks, jobs, etc. goes away and we just get to be ourselves. We enjoy our friends and our families and life is not such a mad race. We become comfortable in our own skin and laugh at anyone who critiques us.
I used to say “the feminists said we could have it all and baby we got it all, the old jobs and now the new, damn those feminists”
I also think this “entitled” generation is unhappy, male or female because the political correctness and victim society has them waiting around for handouts and their is no self satisfaction in that. A lot have no stable family, no religion, no values. They live for brand name clothes, video games – nothing of real value.
Easy to be depressed when you have nothing to do……..
Carla, I don’t bother of this global conspiraty, but rather of the red aliens that propagate it, and get big money out of the business
BTW “Le parfum d’adam”, thriller by Jean Christophe Rufin in 2007 put ahaead the communist agenda behind the “ecolos”
Women with Feminism have gotten what they wanted and now get what they deserve.
Men who really do not see any gain in marriage when all the laws are against them.
Love is suspect if a man has any wealth.
Women are getting more miserable? Did I miss that poll? Does anybody take Dowd seriously anymore? Certainly she has plenty of reasons to be miserable. Is she simply projecting here own emptiness, vapidity, and awareness of personal failure upon all of womankind? She seems to paint with a very broad brush. I doubt that she has any contact with average American women in that rarified atmosphere she inhabits. Do men have a happiness advantage? Is it a genetic thing? I am happy. My tropical fish are happy, at least they were until I accidentaly dropped my hairdryer into the aquarium. My husband looks pretty happy. We’re friends, and have ups and downs, but tht’s life. What do you miserable women expect, champaign, caviar, Dancing with the Stars, and bliss? I’m certain that men are miserable at times. It’s not often you hear them bitching and whining, though. God, somebody ship Maureen some estrogen because she is depressing. What a twit.
Suggestion to urban women: Stop reading Dowd and head over to Amazon or Barnes & Noble and put in your pre-order for Sarah Palin’s book – “Going Rogue: An American Life”.
Partner? That’s a funny one. Homo men doing it at the truck stop are partners.
The essence of women’s depression is two things: Selfishness…and…..Selfishness.
Just study two women: Dowd and Palin. What is the most noticable characteristic? Palin is a very devout Christian who has a sense of service and humility. Dowd is a secular memememememememememe type.
Happiness…Is that in pill form and do I need a prescription?
“A woman doesn’t know what happiness is until she gets married, but by then it’s too late.”
“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.”
The very fact we can take precious time to analyze ourselves as to whether or not [or to what degree] we are miserable would seem to indicate that life ain’t so frickety frackin’ bad after all.
Misery is an equal-opportunity affliction. Non?
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the obvious yet, namely, that modern humans still have the same basic physiology and psychology of human tens of thousands of years ago, but we live in a vastly different environment. In short, human evolution has not caught up to human “progress”. Modern Americans are far less likely to get a decent amount of exercise, spend enough time in the sun to keep the vitamin d levels high enough, and often gorge themselves on processed foods which contain much more concentrated levels of organic molecules like fructose than our bodies evolved to use efficiently over long periods of time. Making the conscious choice to take care of the body is one of the most effective ways to stave off depression and other mental illness.
Offtopic, I’d like to respond to the following statement “A lot have no stable family, no religion, no values. They live for brand name clothes, video games – nothing of real value.”
It saddens me that someone with such shoddy thought processes decided to breed, as the mind is going to become one of the more critical attributes as the species moves forward, moreso than it already is. Linking people’s hobbies to their values/lifestyle(as if belonging to a cult is some sort of guarantee of happiness, haha), and then trying to point to this as the cause of depression is asinine(well, if only they were knitting instead of skateboarding, everything would be peachy keen). I hope you teach your children to use their minds more effectively than you use yours.
While the author of the article is a breath of fresh air around PJM, the comments are mostly filled with the same old poisonous dreck.
There’s less than forty comments and a good chunk of them are related to shaming women. Shaming the unmarried woman, the feminist woman, the woman who makes sexual choices that aren’t inside the conservative norm, and shaming women who dare to find happiness in themselves instead of their husband or children.
If you rely on others to make you happy or if you define your happiness in terms of your relationship to others, you will have an inconsistent source of happiness. It is one thing to take joy in having children, it is another thing to pin your identity and happiness on the term “mother”. When your kids let you down — and they will because they are human beings living their own lives — what then? What happens when a woman lives to be a good wife, deriving her happiness from that, and then her husband turns out to be a cheat or a liar? I suppose then she is just wrong for choosing someone like that, even if she had no way of knowing. Or maybe she had sex with him before marriage and he didn’t respect her, giving him license to be awful.
Which brings me to my next point: the only people who think that someone “won” or “lost” the sexual revolution are people who see sex only as a tool used to wield power over someone else. And that is just sick.
Whoaaaa there. I thought that the sexual revolution championed by the feminists was to liberate women. It certainly worked out fine for the guys. Casual sex, minimal commitment and little responsibility. Declining marriages, skyrocketing divorce, and the new liberated woman, thanks to you ladies. Buyers remorse? Something missing here? You don’t need marriage to get pregnant. You don’t even need a man. And you’ve got your career. Of course we expect you to work as hard as we do. No dispensation for gender. If you want a baby as well, fine. Just don’t ask us for any favors. You punch in on time just like we do.
Pretty obvious why she HATES Sarah Palin now isn’t it….hahahahaha
Sarah has everything Dowd NEVER had and she is pissed!
I appreciate what MDCT (27) above said.
We are different creatures are we not?
Men, it has been said, have two choices, “jail or work”. We are what we do. Doing means putting food on the table. When we cannot; we are lost. We as individuals are the bottom line and there is no one left to blame. Dollars or fishes – bring something home.
When we do, there is no problem for most of us. At the end of that day the favorite chair, food and drink and a remote control are pretty much all most guys need to get ready for the next morning. We are not hard to understand but perhaps difficult to deal with.
Women have a whole different set of issues. Such it is and has always been. We were meant to be partners, and I hope I do not offend by that. We compliment – the male and female. We accomplish together.
At work and at home that can happen. Let us not kid ourselves that either is easy or free from sacrifice. Nobody gets a free card for being male or female, including your brother.
Spindok
The very fact we can take precious time to analyze ourselves as to whether or not [or to what degree] we are miserable would seem to indicate that life ain’t so frickety frackin’ bad after all.
That’s a very good point. In the not-so-distance past, women’s lives – unless they were rich – were filled with non-stop drudgery, continous, precarious pregnancy, poverty and disease. They really had something to moan about. And in many parts of the world it’s still like that.
If ever I get tempted to wallow in self-pity I thank God that I’m not living in Afghanistan.
Following from Sapwolf’s post:
Sarah Palin doesn’t look miserable. She looks like she’s having the time of her life, despite financial and media difficulties.
The thing that she does for herself is running. She runs at least six miles per day. (I think that was the author’s point).
Toronto Girl (#17): I’m with you there. I’m sick of women complaining. Single women complain that they can’t find a man (because their expectations are too high). Married women complain about their husbands, children, and chores (because they live for everyone but themselves). The working moms I know seem to complain a lot less–probably because they are too busy to complain–they bitch more about job stuff, salaries, etc.
Keep in mind that we are talking about Maureen Dowd here. Furthermore, we are talking about a certain east-coast mentality that is beholden to a certain set of values.
Toronto Girl;
Ah … It’s always greener on the other side of the fence.
Titus;
Most of the unmarried childbearing occurs among the less educated and the underclass. These are not career women.
I’m with you 42. Next time I complain about nothing to wear, I’ll think of an Afghan women with only one thing to wear. A bag.
Better to be a free hag than a prisoner in a bag.
See, I know a lot of happy women, Ms. Dowd. What do they all have in common? They don’t define themselves by what they do, what they have, who they know, or how they look. They define themselves by who they are.
My wife was a happy person before we met and she’s a happy person now. And while I do my best to keep her happy, at the end of the day I’m not the source of her happiness. It comes from a place deep inside her. And being with her every day is a treat.
Well put, Michele.
42. Mary Jackson:
“If ever I get tempted to wallow in self-pity I thank God that I’m not living in Afghanistan.”
Same here, Mary, same here. America isn’t perfect but I’d rather live here than anywhere else and I believe America is worth fighting for and keeping it that way. There are so many people/places/things to be thankful for that are easy to take for granted.
It doesn’t take much reading of Maureen Dowd to figure out that she is a profoundly unhappy person, who is apparently projecting her unhappiness on American women in general. I used to dislike her, but mostly now just feel sorry for her.
#37 Thinkfast, touched a nerve did I. If you can’t see our culture being replaced by fascination with TMZ or Access Hollywood, kids sitting on their computers instead of doing chores, then you are missing the big picture. People feel good about themselves when they ACCOMPLISH things and not just what more can I get today. If you are okay with your kids like that, I feel sorry for you. These are not hobbies anymore, this is their lifestyles. And if they are skateboarding, at least they have a goal – that is a good thing. Any ACTIVITY is a good thing.
Lack of family values, lack of religion, lack of morals, have all contributed to a victim society, poor poor me. The women on this post have it right, we should be thankful every day we have such comfortable lives. Leftists are these victim people who whine and whine and want the government to “fix” things. Right wing try to fix things on their own.
Women are unhappy, miserable, because despite all of the fantastic scientific advances of the 21st century, they still don’t have a penis. And that just gnaws away at them. ask Sigmeund.
There are many sound professional reasons why sociologists don’t allow themselves to infer causality from their data. One is that the product often winds up sounding like a 10th grade honors thesis. Sure there may be some valid reasoning in there… but honestly, we all know you’re just making stuff up to have something to say while you practice using logic.
That’s my quick summation of my opinion on M. Dowd’s article. So there’s an inverse correlation between women’s reported happiness and years since the 50′s. But nobody — including the sociologists who actually study this stuff for a living — actually knows why this happens. The only people who have the arrogance to pretend they “know what’s going on” are opinion writers. Well, and of course high school honors students. Of course your opinions are welcome, because that’s how we learn, but… let’s just say the degree to which you believe your opinion to be “correct” is inversely proportional to the degree to which I think you are full of it.
Anyway, I like Michele’s article. She’s not trying to draw any conclusions about societal decline or anything out of reach of a regular person observing their own life in a self-reflective way. I might boil what she’s saying to this: Be mindful of how happiness works in your own life. Listen to your own happiness and learn from it. Eliminate codependency in all its forms. Find the love in your life–whatever it may be–and live for that. But make sure it’s your own, and not some other person’s prescription.
Also, if statements like this are triggering some cognitive dissonance for you — like they seem to disagree uncomfortably with some messages in your head — you may want to take a serious look at some codependency literature.* It really does help with the whole happiness thing.
* Here’s a great link on codependency that’s apparently from a buddhist site. I guess because they’re obviously very interested in happiness.
#2.
“There are not enough drugs in the world to help that sour plagiarist put two positive thoughts together.”
Ahhh . . . yes!
But . . .you have to feel sorry for old MoDo, even so.
Going home every night to her empty condo, her only comfort a bottle of Old Raj gin and a vibrator, dreaming of the good old days of the 60′s and 70′s, wondering what the hell went wrong . . . weeping bitter tears, falling into an alcohol and ambien induced sleep.
Sad, so sad.
bruce, you nailed it :mgreen:
that’s why there are so little trans-genders !
50. bruce,
Google ‘clitoris’.
I hope you’ve learned something today, laddy.
You’re welcome.
If I kept the kind of company that I’m guessing Dowd and Huffington keep, I’d probably be depressed, too. But my female friends and I are pretty much enjoying life which, as ever, is full of difficult moments. That’s, you know, life.
If women are depressed it has much to do with the more liberal views forced upon them in their daily lives over many years. These views have filled many minds an emptiness. We all (most) approve of personal ambition,self-reliance, productiveness, we’re eager to pursue own happiness and know we should not live on handouts but should earn what we get. Ultimately, the message to women has been a hatred of these fundamental values. A strenuous contest between opposing forces has created this loss of feeling. Liberal ideas are total failures and are demeaning to women. Ultimately because it makes no sense.
Since this article is about Maureen Doud I have my suspicion what she is lamenting is her own moral depression, mirrored by many of her ilk. Women like Doud have such a narrow view of women in general. Other then gender there really is no resemblance.
Regardless of one’s burdens and circumstances, one’s happiness has to come from within, from sturdiness of character, not from any externalities.
Resilience and optimism are the keys, and those are traits sorely lacking in today’s instant gratification, feel-good society. At her age, Dowd should be better schooled and have more self-control than that, and oughta quit feeling sorry for herself.
As I live a life presently in the midst of the worst sh*t storm I have ever experienced, over two months in length, coming at me from all quarters and no end in sight, and certainly no time to be an elf to myself, I nonetheless remain cheerful and energetic and greet each day with joy (and a wink and a prayer to da Man Upstairs that today might, if it please the Heavenly Court, be a good day to stop raining sh*t on my life
)). Resilience and optimism. And humor helps a lot, too.
It is generally the case, but not always that the ‘funks’ is caused by lack of graditude.
The ability to be grateful brings light into a persons life. The head clears, priorities are focused and new meaning is infused into the everyday.
To define yourself by the task, eg: mother, doctor etc. is wasting one’s time; by self absorbed defining. Just get the job done and be grateful the sun does shine on you, the wind does blow through your hair. Life is messy, but graditude is a instant cleaner.
Some time ago, a study was done of people who had won big time lottery money. The researchers found that after the initial excitement wore off, people returned to their previous levels of contentment. Those who were happy before generally remained happy; those who had been miserable before returned to their usual state of depression.
Male or female,some people retain a positive outlook on life no matter what and others crab and moan and are eternally dissatisfied. (Most of us, including me, fall somewhere in the middle – we’re not Miss Mary Sunbeam every day, but we’re a long way from slashing our wrists.) Dowd is one of the chronically miserable. Sure, the NY Times is going down the tubes, but MoDo’s life would not be considered a terrible one by most people on the planet. She gets paid far more than her meager talent is worth, she lives in an exciting city, she’s not bad-looking, she doesn’t have to dig through trash cans for her next meal. And she’s utterly incapable of appreciating what she has.
Mary Jackson’s advice is excellent: think about being a female in Afghanistan and then thank God for what you have. Or better yet, pay a visit to a Children’s or VA hospital. You won’t be thinking about how tough you have it then.
Amen Donna V #59. I think the trick is not “having what you want” but “wanting what you have” That is to say being grateful for what we have been given. I learned this lesson in a very difficult way. I was able to ‘get’ most everything I thought I wanted-none of it provided happiness. It wasn’t until I became spiritually awakened that I realized that I want what I have, I chose my life, my path-’stuff’ doesn’t make me happy (I actually always knew that somehow)I have learned that I am loved and OK just the way I am. My skin fits! (that is just amazing to me) I am capable of loving and I realize what it is that makes me happy, what my purpose here in this world is. There is a very spiritually inspired book that tells us exactly what God wants for us and that is to be “happy, joyous and free” Everything else is just noise.
Bug Eyed;
That bears repeating and in bold:
Regardless of one’s burdens and circumstances, one’s happiness has to come from within, from sturdiness of character, not from any externalities.
Michele and Maureen are both wrong. First, I’m never in a funk for any length of time and most of my associates and friends are less angst-ridden than I. I certainly am my job, my spouse, my house, my pets, my hobbies, et al. I’m proud of them all and work to make everything run well. What’s good for them benefits me. I’m not a victim. Life today is the result of many, probably boring, yet well thought out decisions. The “One” has me very concerned on many front but in the meantime, I’m having a blast.
This modern woman is certainly not unhappy. I was a stay at home mom in the middle of the “I’ve got to have a job to be fulfilled era”, raised two responsible citizens, helped my husband grow a business, and am taking care of elderly parents. I look back and do not have one regret and find that in serving others I find happiness.
We must lose ourselves to find ourselves.
True identity can be found in only one place, the person of Jesus Christ.
I would have to disagree that women are generally unhappy. Women are more emotional, yes, but it doesn’t always mean they tend to be more unhappy.
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