CREATING YOUR LIFE

I do not believe in letting life happen to me. I believe that I must determine where I want to be in a year, in five years, in ten... and then figure out what it will take to get there. This sounds strong and very admirable, Inez, but I assure you it has been a difficult, discouraging and all too convoluted a road to follow. Somerset Maugham said that if he knew your parents' status in life and where you were born he could predict your future. Each of us are born into a preconceived set of circumstances. The day I arrived my parents assumed I would develop normally, and want to follow my mother's pattern of life. I would learn wifely skills, absorb Jewish middle class values, marry well and live a comfortable life with my husband supporting me. I would have a lovely home with every convenience, two children who would absorb my attention for at least twenty years and then I would be a grandmother who cooked, baked and baby sat. I would read easy fiction, agree with my husband on all things and my social life would revolve around his business and social needs.
I wanted all this to happen to me because I thought that was what defined The Good Life.
I never understood why I was so restless and unhappy until by a fluke I will never understand, I began to hear hints of other worlds from high school teachers who adored me and decided to go to the University of Michigan. The world of literature, music, art and philosophy opened up to me like a glorious explosion of light and I was enchanted. I realized that inside me was a unique spark and if I did not let it shine I would surely die even as I trudged through my days doing what was not only expected by others but was my own dream as well.
I believe I made myself fail at relationships, marriages and all the domesticities, women of the fifties embraced because inside something told me I could go beyond the sink, the stove and the bedroom into magic worlds of my own creation. I could write a book. I could enrich a child. I could paint a picture, discover other cultures; I could think. Indeed, I could find my own world.
Each time I took a step toward realizing my individuality I suffered rejection, anger and scorn. When I married my first husband I began writing for The Harbus News, the newspaper for Harvard Business School students. I loved it a lot more than I loved being a wife. One day, someone saw my husband and said, "You are Lynn Treeger's husband, aren't you..." He came home and said "You will never write again."
And while I was married to him I did not write again. Instead, I bottled up my need to express myself and let my eating disorder flourish.
I will not bore you with the many other examples of how I managed to keep that little spark alive. You know most of them and everything I have accomplished was at great cost. But that cost was only to me. No one else ever suffered because of my decisions to travel the country in a fifth wheel, to take a job in Oklahoma City, to create a television show on CBS for no remuneration and hours and hours of time I should have spent earning enough money to pay my rent. Your father had a wife to please, a family to support. He could not say, "I will do what my heart dictates." He knew his job and he did it. Had he been more philosophical, he would not have hated what he was doing. He would hava found little avenues of pleasure he could take and still support his family and please his wife. Instead, he gave you an education and all the tools you needed to build a beautiful life that satisfies you and makes you grow into the human being you want to be.
YOU can live the life your father never dared to live, not because he was weak but because he was responsible. You can do what he could not because Jon supports you and this is a millenium that allows women to achieve. Do not weep for your father, my dear. Instead dare to live YOUR life always remembering that he never had the chance to test his dream. He gave you the weapons you need to that you can do it and that is his legacy.
When I die, I never want to say, "I wish I had."
I am going to say, "I'm glad I did."
Courage Inez. You can say that too...and I think you will.