The opposite of all. . . .

Is having nothing the opposite of having it all?
Is having enough the opposite of having it all?
Is sharing the opposite of having it all?

What is all?

'Maybe young women don’t wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: You can always change your mind. I know: I’ve had four careers and three husbands. . . .

"Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. Thank you. Good luck. The first act of your life is over. Welcome to the best years of your lives."  

Nora Ephron @ 1996 Wellesley College Graduation

Is "having it all" the second-wave, feminist version of the American Dream?  The longing for "having it all" and the possibility or non-possibility has been bouncing around cyberspace a lot in recent weeks because of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic Cover Story “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”.  I've been reading some of the discussion.  Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable. It reminds me of the old goal of getting a bigger part of the pie.  One reason, an ethical one, this makes me uncomfortable might be that the difficulty having it all (or even a bigger piece) seems to be one of the first world problems that pale in comparison to the desire to have some food, a place to sleep, and a modicum of safety.  Another reason. a theological one, is that I think human beings are limited creatures and that living with certain kinds of limits may be a form of righteousness; this is not to deny that there are limits that are unjust and should be addressed, even shattered.  

Without trivializing, I mention that death is one of the limits we all face.  Human life does not last forever.  This week Nora Ephron confronted that limit and as people, especially women, have responded to her death many of them have referred to the commencement speech she gave in 1996 at her alma mater.  The quotations above are from that talk.  Read the whole thing!  Like Ursula K. Le Guin's "Left-Handed Commencement Address" delivered at Mills College in 1983, this speech goes beyond the trite to the heart of important life issues.  (LaGuin goes further to question the notion that success is to be pursued.)

I find two points in Ephron's assertion that women in the class of 1996 might be able to have it all useful and true, despite my fundamental skepticism about that claim.  First, she admits that this will be messy and complicated then advises embracing the mess and the complications.  She does not expect this to be easy or assume that making it easy is someone else's job.  Second, at the end of her remarks, she urges her listeners to make making a difference for other women part of what is included in their "all."  Thus, she appears to be in sympathy with those Americans who assert that the American Dream is bigger than having everything for one's self and that it includes contributing to the public good.

And that reminds me of another remarkable American woman from an earlier phase of woman's rights, Frances Willard.  As the president of the WCTU her motto emphasized action more than possession:  Do Everything!  (Wish I could find the photograph of her at her roll top desk, piled high with all the paper involved in doing everything.)  Notice that Ephron mixes doing and having and a careful reading of Slaughter might also distinguish between the two.  

Only a dream?

An ABC News/Yahoo News poll revealed that today, only half of us think the American dream — which the pollsters defined as 'if you work hard you'll get ahead' — still holds true, while 43% said that it had once been true. LA Times article

Of course a radio news report of this poll caught my attention as I drove to school this morning.  I was curious about the content of the "dream" people say is not true.  This article tells me: work hard and you'll get ahead.  This is more-or-less how historian Arthur Mann accounted for the fact that there has never been the same sort of socialist movement in the USA as in much of Europe.  I think he called it the roast beef principle, or some such thing.  His point was that Americans believed that they would rise above the limiting conditions and achieve their dreams including having roast beef for dinner.  Both Mann and this poll appear to ground the dream in Eric Foner's notion of economic freedom.  I wonder if the results would have been the same if the definition had pointed more toward moral or personal freedom?

 

The article suggests that lack of faith in the dream is not merely the outcome of the current economic situation, but that it has been coming for sometime.  That suggests that something beyond economic freedom and financial opportunity is essential to the dream, even stated so baldly.  

Dream Work

"But it is precisely the willingness to do something difficult, painful, unintentionally mischievous, or finally impossible that gives purpose to individual lives, both as they are lived and as they are remembered."  Jim Cullen, The American Dream, p. 34

Although Cullen never uses the term "vocation," this sentence sheds light on that notion so often used here on campus.  The light falls upon an aspect of vocation that is easy to overlook, namely that responding to a call, as understood in a theological, Christian way,  is likely to be hard work and perhaps will involve agony.

This the Puritans knew.  They were not looking for an easy life, neither a spiritually easy one nor a physically easy one.  If the later had been on offer, maybe they would have accepted it, but not if that ease brought with it harm to their spiritual life.  They were looking for freedom from the obstacles that would prevent them from engaging in struggle to live godly lives.

So, if we think that having a dream is just a matter of falling asleep and then waking up to a new world, we are sorely mistaken.  From dream to reality is hard work.