Nancy's Musings

This is a follow-up post to Dreaming Lonely , which I wrote last week. It hasn't been very long since I started practicing seeing myself as removed from dating, but some really interesting things have happened in my brain since then. In just a week I realized how many of my opinions and decisions were giving in to an external pressure. When I thought I would have to marry one of them, I started seeing all men as either suitable or unsuitable and adjusting my standards by prospects. Whether shallow or not, all men were measured by some standard as either a match or mismatch to myself. This man was too stupid, that one too callous, and all of them more or less masculine, which seemed to be the biggest problem. And each man was put in the yes, no, or maybe bin until such a mythical day as he should choose to raise his hand and politely ask permission to excuse himself. There are two logical problems with my bins. Firstly, I am judging men by women's standards, and it just isn'...

I feel like I have blogged about this before. But as it is a recurring theme in my head, it might as well recur here. I was meditating peacefully in one of the holiest places on earth when it occurred to me again (because my brain has to be trained and slowly stroked into peacefulness, and it doesn't always work just before a new semester) that if I had managed to have a similar life back then, I would absolutely 100% have been burned as a witch in the middle ages. Frankly, it didn't take much. Unprotected women were the easiest targets (though as far as I can tell, men were also targeted). That meant poor widows, older single adults, the literate, and basically anyone who could inspire suspicion, fear, jealousy, or dislike. That's me all over the place. I'm not procreating, and therefore serve no useful purpose in the community. It's not that I'm grumpy, necessarily. Even married women get grumpy. It's that I don't have a gift for allaying suspicion. It...

I function best when I have something to look towards - some kind of ideal that nudges my actions. It's like that story that someone told in General Conference about the farmer with the really straight furrows, and his neighbor asks him how he gets them so straight, and he says "well, I look down the row, and I see something, and I keep my eye on that thing while I plough." So his neighbor thinks this is a fabulous idea, but next day, the farmer comes out and sees that his neighbor's rows are atrocious. He asks "didn't you take my suggestion?" and the neighbor says "yeah, but the cow kept moving." Well, my cow is moving. Since giving up on men just over a week ago, I have decided that because marriage isn't something I can dream of anymore, I need to have a single dream. I need to have a vision of what I can make my life without a significant other, partner, or family situation. So last night in my head as I was trying to sleep, I calculate...