I was surprised to find out that some people don’t believe we need to play a ‘role’ in life. In fact, some think that playing a role is directly opposed to being yourself.
Oh yes. Being (and knowing) yourself is important. We’re each gifted with different skills and temperaments, and I don’t think we can be truly happy without embracing and using them. But what about the ‘roles’ we play?
In the 1960s, I witnessed the birth of the ‘feminist movement’. Women, who had been generically excluded from many job opportunities, were legitimately upset. The societal roles of men and women had become so tightly defined that it was oppressive to all our ‘greater goods’. We were overlooking that the “best man for the job” could be a woman too. But, IMHO, there was a detrimental ‘overreaction’ that accompanied that movement toward change.
All roles were about to be reexamined and deemed too confining for ‘personal’ growth. The first to go was the oppressive role of ‘homemaker’. Women were told that they could, and should, do better. It’s almost funny that women seeking more, and broader, opportunity started turning on each other. Homemakers, those who loved their ‘roles’ as wives and mothers, became the new ‘punchline’. Women who didn’t ‘get with the new program’ were also treated like traitors.
Let’s get this straight, this was also the point where ‘being a woman’ started being more harshly defined than ever. All in the interest of liberation. LOL
You were suddenly ’empowered’ to look out for ‘only’ yourself if you didn’t have a Y chromosome. When you got up in the morning your gender supposedly defined everything you were. The ‘roles’ of mother, homemaker, and caregiver became a subliminal taboo. The feminist movement had made their ‘legitimate cause’ into a new ‘religion’ with the deity being their own definition of ‘womanhood’. Instead of looking for ‘equality of opportunities’ the mission took an ugly turn toward (a then undefined idea) what we know today as ‘equity’.
This was the biggest giant step toward destroying the nuclear family and most of the ‘players’ had no idea that they were the ‘tools’.
TV and Hollywood were happy to fan the flames! Compare the TV show “Leave it to Beaver” to “Maude”. Our culture was being nudged toward an end. {It didn’t work on me. Even as a child, Maude was always more of an embarrassing character than June Cleaver. Both were exaggerations of course.}
Where are we now? All traditional ‘roles’ are under attack. We’re even at the ridiculous place where ‘womanhood’ has no definition!
It’s also funny to me that the ‘role’ of CEO, feminist, activist, is okay for a “woman” (if you still know it’s an adult human female) but the ‘role’ of Mother is unfulfilling one’s potential, uninspired, and somewhat demeaning. [Here you might want to ponder, “Whose potential?” did the promoters of ‘mothers in the workforce’ have their ‘eye’ on.]
Our God given “right to choose” is always about what ‘role’ we’ll play. We can play many at once. Our ‘roles’ are not our immutable traits. You are a “black man”. You are a “woman”. You are “physically challenged”. But what ‘role’ you choose is where your ‘meaning’ is. By the volume of unhappiness and frustration now present in our society, it seems ‘meaning’ has gone desperately missing. It’s time to ask everyone, “What’s wrong with playing a ‘role’ in life?”
I suggest we start unapologetically reviving roles from our past and add them back to our ‘library’ of choices. Your true ‘liberation’ is all about the ‘roles’ you’re free to choose.
Abraham Lincoln said it best:
I want to leave you with more ‘food for thought’. It’s clear that the option to be a “stay at home mother” is obstructed by our current financial “needs”. If you think it was an accident that once mothers flooded the workforce looking for ‘equality’ they got ‘fenced in’ making it harder to return to being ‘homemakers’, you ought to watch the video below. The destruction of the bonds of the nuclear family is a basic tenant in Communism, as well as, making the population dependent upon government.
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