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Welcome, or should I say ATTEN-TION ?!?.
This weblog is a series of essays in progress on my experience, or obvious lack
thereof, in mothering. Enjoy! And, if you don't...drop and give me twenty!
The German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche
wrote:
Suppose
a demon came to you in your loneliest of lonlinesses and said: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have
to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every
thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and
sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of
existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust.”
I don’t think my mother has ever read Nietzsche,
but if I showed her this quotation I’m pretty sure she would say “I know that!” Scholars
debate the meaning of the Nietzschean eternal return, but mothers don’t need to. They know that mothering
is a Sisyphean task - -and then some. After all, Sisyphus could afford to be self absorbed.
Mothers cannot. And this is where my difficulties begin... First of all, if I were rolling
a rock up a hill I would have three little kids trailing along behind me and I would be so worried the rock was going to roll
back over and flatten them that I would never get the zen of it. Then I’d have to keep looking over
my shoulder to see what they were picking up and putting in their mouths. I’d have to make sure they
were all still there – close enough that I could supervise them but at a safe distance such that if the rock does fall
they don’t get hurt. And then there would be all the questions….”Why can’t I roll
a rock up the hill, Where’s my rock, It’s not fair that you have the biggest rock.” “Mommy,
can you roll my rock for a while, I’m tired?” “He took my rock!” “I
saw it first!” “Don’t touch my rock?” “I’m hungry!!”
Camus asks why Sisyphus was smiling? I’ll tell you why. Somebody
else was taking care of his kids.
Read more...
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