Member-only story
An “ideal” bill of goods
What we were taught to expect from marriage
My response to Klara Jane’s question yesterday
No, I don’t think people are unhappier in their marriages than they were 50 years ago. I don’t think people have ever been different than they are today. The glacial rate of cultural shifts is only second to the almost complete stagnancy of ideological change.
We are the same. We are human, messy and ugly, brilliant and beautiful. And we crave stability, happiness, and fulfillment. Some of us have the privilege to want for more than that and see it realized. Others, not so much.
A story or two, today:
My paternal grandmother was 96 years old when she passed last December. She was the most amazing human I will ever know. And I believe that is because she chose joy. She chose JOY every day. Her external life did not determine her inner life. Her inner life was her own and she owned it, entirely. Stay with me here.
As a girl who grew up in the smallest of small towns, Midwest, USA, with hardworking parents (albeit an alcohol-abusing father), she knew how to adapt to an environment. She did a lot of manual labor but was a really creative person at heart. She ran her own business well into her 90’s-a hair salon.
