Curiouser
There are a couple of things I need to write through this morning, so just bear with me, please and comments are totally welcome and encouraged. In a perfect world we’d be having this conversation together, around a table maybe, with croissants, jam, butter, coffee. All my bfast faves.
I have all these curiosities …
First, who made longevity the goal in life? Why do we try to stay alive as long as possible? In my experience the loneliest people you can meet are the ones who are so old that their friends have all died, their siblings and sometimes some of their kids have already died. Or, worse, they’re 97 years old and their 75-year-old kid is their caretaker.
Longevity is not a great idea. How did we get this baked so deeply into our brains?
We have so many ways to keep people alive for so long … but why? Sure, there’s a window in there where we have good quality of life. But there’s also a tipping point when life becomes all about doctor appointments, surgeries, interventions … why don’t we know when to say when?
I guess fear of death. Always fear of death, right? We’d rather live here as a slave to the medical system, taking twelve different drugs (oh my god, one time I saw one of my hospice patient’s charts … the list of medicines was four pages long! ) than accept death as a reasonable option.
OK, that’s the first thing.
Second, why are we still teaching kids how to do things that machines can do? Why haven’t schools evolved to educate the human being for life in the world in which we are living now?
And if schools aren’t working all that well, kids are bored all the time, not really learning anything useful, why do we still buy so fully into the system?
OK, last thing.
I noticed last night a story about a woman named Heather Armstrong who died by suicide.
Here’s a description of her: Heather B. Armstrong was an American blogger from Salt Lake City, Utah. She wrote under the pseudonym of Dooce, a pseudonym that came from her inability to quickly spell "dude" during online chats with her former co-workers.
First of all, no disrespect to the dead, but how hard is it to type dude quickly? It has four letters, two of them the same, and two of them are next to each other on the keyboard.
K so that was confusing.
You might notice that every news outlet is carrying the story of her death this morning.
She came to fame as a mommy blogger very early on, in 2001. What a derogatory description, right? But I guess that was what it was, as opposed to being … a writer?
I wrote a piece after the shooting at Sandy Hook about how I was making a point of eating a nice breakfast with my kids in the morning before school, knowing they could be murdered while they were at school. In the story I said that I wasn’t concerned if we got to school a little late because we were enjoying breakfast together and someone picked it up and started a Reddit thread, called me an entitled white mommy blogger and tore me to shreds because I had the audacity to disrespect all the school employees by not getting my kids to school in a timely fashion.
Right. Also. Automatic weapons. Kids. Dead.
I didn’t know what Reddit was at the time and I was astounded that anyone would take a story about me loving my kids and eating pancakes together for breakfast and turn me into a monster.
But I guess that’s what happened with Heather B. Armstrong. Apparently she was pulled off the pedestal by haters as often as she was put up there by admirers. She wrote about all the most intimate aspects of her life as a mother, or I guess as a human. Her depression, divorce, alcoholism. I would imagine that in twenty-two years of writing she had to write about everything.
I think my curiosity about her this morning is that the whole thing seems like a cautionary tale. Heather offered every aspect of her personal life to the public for consumption. Some people loved her for it and some people ripped her to shreds. Her big thing was motherhood, and yet … over time she became so depressed that she subjected herself to experimental trials that involved being placed in a coma for short periods of time. She battled alcoholism and what looks like an eating disorder and then ultimately killed herself.
Listen, I will never be in the running for Mother of the Year. Ever. I get how hard it all is. I get how hard life is. But folks, if your big schtick in life is your kids and being a mom, and I’m going out on a limb here … is it good parenting to write about everything, post endless photos of your anorexic self, and then ultimately check out of their young lives by your own hand?
What does all of this tell us about our insane culture of hyper consumption of other peoples’ lives? Did the blogosphere, social media, whatever you want to call it, literally eat Heather alive?
I am so curious about this … about the endless fascination the world has with people who are trying to tell us how to live, beautiful people who are divulging all the mucky details of their lives, people who grow large followings as, oh god, influencers.
What is it about us that we need these people so much?
And if a person becomes so ‘large’ in the public sphere, do they have to keep manufacturing crises to maintain their audience?
Is it all for money?
Is it all for fame?
Is it worth it?
I’m circling back around here to my question about longevity.
Why does it seem like people don’t know when to say when?
I’m circling back around here to our broken institutions.
Why can’t we call it quits when something isn’t working very well?
Focus on a new, better thing?
Why aren’t we good at knowing when a good run is enough?
Do we even understand the idea of enough?
Enough money.
Enough time.
Enough minutes in the spotlight.
Enough stress on your kids.
Enough.
I don’t have any answers. Just curiouser and curiouser.