I’m telling you, after the last few weeks of reading weblogs, and interacting with various people both online and off, it kind of makes me wonder if there are many happy people left in the world. I don’t mean the kind of happy where you’re dancing, singing, and whistling away as you bake cookies every day, I just mean the kind of happy where you’re fairly “content”, reasonably satisfied with the way your life is, and prepared to go ahead with working on the things that you feel need fixing. More often up than down. I’m the same way for a couple days each month. Whenever PMS starts to hit me, my mood starts to sink, I go on a big “pity party”, I withdraw from people, and go off somewhere to feel sorry for myself until PMS lifts. Then I’m back to my generally happy and enthusiastic, full of mischief, self. So I definitely know about severe mood swings during PMS, meno-pause, etc. (half the women I work with are going through meno pause)
… but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about all the depression! I can’t begin to count, how many people I’ve met online that are on anti-depressants! So what’s up with that? (before you write me nasty notes, I DO understand completely about the chemical imbalances that cause a true clinical depression) Are doctors over perscribing them? Are people just unable to cope with what’s really bothering them, and masking it with drugs? I’m seriously asking, because it just boggles my mind why generations before us could cope, and we can’t.
I know you read how there’s so much more stress in OUR lives, than in THEIRS, but I don’t get that either! All aspects of life were so much more difficult in my opinion…. Life was ’simple’, but it was HARD! Look at the automation we have to help us with all our everyday tasks now. Yes, women work outside the home now, and still raise kids, but staying home with 10 kids, and a washboard and wood stove for which you had to chop the wood and haul the water doesn’t sound any easier to me, than working the day, picking up your child at daycare, and then stopping at McDonalds for dinner! Plus, it’s perfectly acceptable to have a housekeeper to your housework once a week, AND hubby’s often pitch in now with childcare and house duties… something that never happened before.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think that we women (and men!!!) have it easier now in many respects, than in past generations. Also, in generations past, divorce was almost non-existant, so women had the added stress of sticking out the marriage no matter what was going on behind closed doors! They were trapped! Now we have choices about that, and if we leave, and can’t support ourselves, the government will.
I have also always thought, how “greedy” our generation seems to be! We always want bigger, better, shinier, newer! We’re totally guilty of that syndrome around here! Our house is big, and it’s filled with all the gizmos and brand new “things” you could ever want, and we’re always wanting, buying, MORE. Many of us have debts up the whazoo (thanks largely to high risk ratio mortgages and credit cards), but it doesn’t stop us from spending more. Then we get depressed about that! Our parents used to save for old age, because they had to… they didn’t have pensions to fall back on.
Rarely do I see “fat” ancestors in old family photographs. Could that be because they worked their asses off, and we have much more time just to sit on ours and feel sorry for ourselves?? For heaven’s sake, I drive to the hockey rink which is 2 blocks away from my house! When I was a stay at home mommy for 10 years, my house was clean, my kids were clean and happy, supper was cooked, driveway shoveled, lawn mowed, cookies baked, and I still had plenty of time for sitting around watching soap operas, or yapping on the phone, or coffeeing with my neighbors. Now I’m a working Mom, and I still have a clean house, kids are still happy, supper is usually cooked, kids shovel and mow, I’m too fat to bake cookes, and I still have plenty of time to sit on my fat ass in front of my computer complaining about how unhappy and fat I am, and how I have no time to exercise, or do anything about it! What a joke! LOL
You know what scares me worse than OUR generation?? It’s our kids’! OMG… it’s going to be scarey I think! I’ve got really good kids, so far (17 & 14). They always have been expected to do certain things, and that’s just the way it is. I’m extremely consistent, and more stubborn than a mule on certain issues. They learned by 2 that no amount of whining and kicking and screaming was going to change Mom’s mind, so those activities were pretty short lived phases around here. My kids have also, always had certain chores, no matter what the age, to do. Yet… they’re lazy little toads in many ways! It really scares me as to what kind of adults they may be, and I seriously know that mine have a much better chance of being successful, than many others I encounter daily in the school!
What I’m seeing in the schools, are children who don’t know that there is a difference between “children space” and “adult space” and so many little ones are just missing that completely! They’ve been taught at home that they are the cutest, sweetest, most important person in the world, and then when they get to school, they expect the teacher and the 25 other little people who have the same notion, to respond in the same fashion as their family! When you have a little kindergarten child who stands and puts his hands on his hips and screams “no” to the teacher… you know he’s missed the lesson on respecting adults. We had a grade 5 boy tell his teacher to “fuck off” this week, because he was told that since he wouldn’t do his art assignment, that he couldn’t go to gym. I’ve had little girls burst into tears in the library because the book they want is already checked out! GET A LIFE! We had a grade 6 girl moon the boys because they were bugging her! Kindergarten kids who cry every day for 2 months because they want their Mommy, kids that come to school dirty, with horrible “gas station” lunches… (lunchables, chocolate bars and pop). We know that these families aren’t extremely poor. At least not too poor to feed and clothe their kids, because more often than not, the parents both smoke ($5/pack here) and are known to frequent the local bingo hall. I do not work in some inner city school. This is just a little school of 250 students in a small city.
This post has ended up long and rambly, and making no sense, but too bad.. it’s my weblog, and all these things were just racing through my brain this morning. What are we becoming? If you see yourself in here.. don’t take it personally, because… it’s not you…..it’s me…….it’s we.
