The Next 25 Minutes
May. 29th, 2024 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteeleAs silly as it may seem, the next 25 minutes determine who and what you are going to be.
I don't miss being young, because I felt burdened with the gravity of my potentials at all times. Much of my young life was eaten up in fear of trajectories I deemed not good enough for the likes of me. Motherhood was one of them: I saw motherhood as near-unadulterated suffering. Though I grew up near more than anyone's fair share of stay-at-home moms, I was confident I would not have the luxury of staying at home if I became a mother. When I wasn't dreading the future, I was mired in cringe about the past; either my own or someone else's. This is the curse of our era: we are taught to indulge the human tendency to marinate in the negative. There is no better way to marinate in the negative than to amplify the past and future at the expense of living in the present moment. An unhappy, unsatisfied ingrate will always fall for the ruse that the past was shameful and the future is bleak. Such an unsatisfied ingrate is an easy target for advertising and a buffet of hypochondriac and genuine conditions that lead to a state of dependence and indentured servitude.
Many of my essays contain information I wish I had been told as a young woman, and this is true of the current essay. Back in the late 1980s, I was desperate trying to finish high school. Though I had completed a bunch of required courses by my junior year, I still needed a ton of science and math credits to have any hopes of graduating. The school district I was in was considered one of the nation's finest: all young adults needed STEM. Meanwhile, I was going through a horrific breakup with my first real boyfriend and the deaths of two grandparents. I was plagued with depression and night terrors. So of course the single worst thing happened: the school forced me to dissect a cat.
I made many sincere attempts to get out of the cat dissection. I claimed a religious exemption: no dice. I tried saying it was against my morals as a vegetarian. Nope. In the end, I was forced. Of course the female cat I dissected was pregnant. The sights, smells, and general awfulness of the experience left me with zero recollection of the anatomy and physiology I was supposed to learn. Instead, I can call up the hideous sight of arterial and venal grit into memory like it was yesterday. The only thing the experience instilled in me was a homicidal rage towards the teacher at the helm of it all whom I will call Mr. Murray. I honestly hope he rots in hell and that all the smugness and materialist comforts he enjoyed are just out of reach as he drowns in a stinking pond of formaldehyde... not forever, but for long enough to matter.
Little did I realize it then that I had multiple opportunities to walk away and utterly improve the trajectory of my life. When my religious exemption was denied, I could have woken up the next morning and said "I am now done with public school". In Illinois, parents don't need to explain why they are pulling children out of public school for homeschool. The laws have never been strict. I could have easily walked.
In hindsight, I should have quit public school somewhere around age twelve, when my debilitating and embarrassing periods arrived and it became abundantly clear I could learn more by messing around on a primitive IBM computer or reading for 30 minutes than spending the day at school. All that time, I labored under the delusion school was mandatory. It wasn't... at least not in Illinois!
I'll never be grateful for being forced to dissect a cat, but I am grateful for the way things turned out. There are certain turns of fate that could not have happened any other way. In the movie Peggy Sue Got Married, the protagonist Peggy Sue goes back to her own past to explore what would have happened had she avoided getting pregnant in high school. Spoiler alert: in the end, she chooses not to change anything because to do so would mean she would miss out on the experience of having her beloved children. I feel the way about my life the way Peggy Sue ended up feeling about hers.
I have no regrets and neither should you, however, the past can inform us that the next 25 minutes have the potential to shape our destinies. We may want to alter our situations but we can still be grateful. The foundational change you can make in the next 25 minutes is not what happened to get you here but the attitude you have towards what got you here. The choices of the past are now beyond affecting, but you can affect your attitude now by focusing on what was good by being grateful. At any given time, if you are not laboring in a prison camp or dodging bombs and grenades, you have a lot of choices and that in itself is a blessing for which to be grateful.
In my own teenage case, I should have looked at the 25 minutes that stretched before me where I had to dissect a cat -- an activity that I found revolting from the spiritual level -- and used my two working legs to walk away from the school and back home where I belonged. My parents would have been angry but they would have gotten over it. I would have discovered homeschool laws were on my side.
Let's say I faced more opposition: I still could have walked away. When we push it to extremes, there is a core version of me that will happily fight to the death rather than do what is against my spiritual will: I am ready to be a hardcore nasty person, as should all of us when faced with a true enemy. I am grateful I don't have to invoke my innate, latent serial killer to get what I want. This isn't North Korea. I am glad, because if it was North Korea, you could probably number me among the disobedient dead.
I'm Bored!
The most offensive statement in existence and the unfortunate saying of our times is "I'm bored". Delivered in a whiny voice by a child or someone acting like a child, it is the epitome of lack: not for things to do, but of gratitude. I was watching a documentary on an Australian six year old who refused to go to school. In one of her daily battles with her mother to stay home, she won. The girl marched up to her mother, who was trying to work, and wailed "I'M BORED!" The mother was all excuses and "Mommy needs to work, darling." If I was the girl's mother, I would have replied "You're bored? Go clean the bathroom floor until it sparkles and shines. Don't forget to thank it for its hard work when you finish." If my daughter failed to do the task or tried to push the envelope by whining, I would ignore her until she either found a way to constructively entertain herself or died. This is why I did not become a parent. I did not feel it was my job as some parents do in this era to entertain or instruct my child their every waking minute. I am of the opinion that there is no human being (aside from infants in the cradle) who is owed constant coddling.
When people who depend on you become parasitic and attempt to steal your time in an entitled fashion, it is OK to say "find something to do and educate yourself." When you detach, you gift them with the next 25 minutes by refusing to become an enabler.
Sow a thought, reap an action
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
The above statement is at once terrifying and inspiring, don't you think? It's not that we should outlaw certain thoughts in our feeble, human brains... try not thinking of a pink elephant. The mind needs its own life and variety is healthy. Darkness is necessary but it cannot be allowed to take over and make the rules. So though I would not stop you from thinking of dark things, consider the next 25 minutes. Maybe don't spend the next 25 minutes consuming media that is beneath you -- that which is intentionally or unintentionally designed to trigger dopamine circuits, inflame your sense of injustice, or titillate you with its depravity. Cleaning the bathroom floor would be a far more character-building task, because by cleaning up after yourself, you say to the world "I am humble and I clean up after myself and my fellow beings without whining like a little bitch." Don't forget to thank the bathroom and its items for their hard work.
Maybe you have to spend the next 25 minutes at a job you don't like where you only work for the money. It becomes your duty over the next 25 minutes how to brainstorm a change of life. Imagine a life where you can thrive on earned wealth (perhaps less of it) but does not include working your current job. How do you make that happen? Perhaps it seems impossible as getting out of the cat dissection by walking away from public school seemed to me in 1989. I would remind you that it is possible because once again, you're not in North Korea. This is not to blame you if you feel stuck. Nevertheless, if you are going to change it, you will have to try.
Every soul incarnated onto this planet is extraordinarily good at one thing at a minimum. We've all got an opportunity to shine. In my case, the main things in this incarnation are finally fairly cut and dry as music and writing. I also have plenty of other skills, such as an affinity for caring for cats (while they're alive and well, thank you very much) and cooking. When life conspires to keep you from developing your true talents, such as when Mr. Murray wasted my time that should have been spent learning domestic arts and caring for companion animals, it is your duty to find away around. You build your unique strength until your power topples your enemies for the trifling weaklings they always were. All you have to do is change the next 25 minutes.
Thank you
Date: 2024-05-31 12:09 am (UTC)Ken V
Re: Thank you
Date: 2024-05-31 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 04:01 pm (UTC)Telling a six year old child to go scrub a floor by herself is the stuff of fairly-tail evil stepmothers. It's every bit as cruel as plonking a six year old down in front of a television and telling her to be grateful she has an electronic babysitter.
Children can't regulate their own emotions well enough and don't have the mental resources to not be bored without some sort of meaningful adult input.
Now, does that input have to be indulging them with TV and toys? Of course not! Most six years olds would probably be absolutely delighted if their mother said, "There's no need to be bored sweetie, not when there is so much to do and be grateful for! I noticed that the bathroom floor is dirty - how about you help me clean it? I'll show you how to scrub the floor and make it nice, and we can thank the floor for being there and making our lives comfortable." A child can't do that mental process on their own; they need an adult there to guide them through it. That's why they're, you know, children.
For most of history in most cultures, children have been expected to help adults with tasks, and learn from the experience. Good parents give their kids age-appropriate tasks along side themselves, patiently teach them to perform them, correct mistakes with kindness, and hold the child to reasonable and appropriate standards. They increasingly put them in a mental place where the kid can carry on on their own, whether working or playing, for a while without direct supervision, and slowly help the child build the internal resources to increasingly self-direct as they age. It's not "coddling", it's raising you damn kid. Bad parents tell a lonely (bored) six year old without any adult coping mechanisms who needs adult guidance to get lost.
"Go away and don't bother me, I can't be bothered to raise you" and ignoring a bored (under-engaged, under-parented, emotionally unregulated) six year old is selfish no matter how you skin it with your "gratitude" angle.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 06:43 pm (UTC)But what I actually said is harder to mock with your "I knew I was Evil" schtick, so if you want to read the exact opposite of what I said into my comment, be my guest.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-02 02:57 am (UTC)I'm trying to wrap my brain around your comment...
Date: 2024-06-08 01:39 am (UTC)Davie
Wow, nice essay
Date: 2024-06-08 01:17 am (UTC)When my daughter was in about 5th grade, we took our cat to get spayed.
It turned out that the cat was pregnant at the time. Our daughter begged the vet to keep the uterus with all the little kittens inside. (vet said that NOBODY had ever asked for that before)
The uterus spent a few days in our fridge, then got taken to school to show off to daughter's classmates.
She just thought it was So Cool.
Cat is now maybe 15 yrs old, one of several we keep.
Daughter is now a registered nurse BTW. It seems that biological functions don't frighten her at all. She wants to take care of post partum moms and is working herself in that direction at her hospital.
Davie