Failure

My conversations on the Nostalgia Destruction Tour have included some interesting observations I have not made aloud. Some people are very quick to show how they have been a Success. Others want to demonstrate that they have not been a Failure. These should be identical conversations, but somehow they feel very different. I think I understand this, or at least, I have some a similar disconnect in my own thinking.

My mother always wanted me to be notable, in the sense of anything she could brag about: an author, a professor, an entertainer - or anything that would get me interviewed on Merv Griffin where her friends could see.  She was her mother's daughter in that way. But that was the shallowest of her attitudes and she knew it, and made herself treat more important things as well, more important.  A lot of mothers were like this, and a lot of us are like this, blaming it on our mothers when it is our own fault in the end. It would have been great for me if I had been on Merv Griffin, too.

Yeah, you have your own demons, I won't dwell on mine.

But there is also not having to be sheepish in the face of those who were peers but have now in some sense exceeded us.If I read that correctly, that seems to be worse for people.

We want it both ways, certainly, choosing what we know is more moral and valuable but also secretly wanting to get credit for more standard, banal definitions of success. One can track it at reunions over the years, and the photographers will tell you that a lot of guys will be saying "Have you got change for a hundred?" at the 25th. For my group that was more like the 20th, with everyone jockeying. For high school 50th there were only a very few like that. Most of us were just happy to see someone who could validate the reality we remembered. If someone had taken a different tack, we wanted to hear about it, not judge it.  I imagine there are limits, and people who would never dream of going and seeing the people who once thought they had great potential.  I can't tell you too much about them.

Oh, yes I can, actually.  I had a few as patients over the years. It flips along the way for them.  Those who have a serious mental illness or a spouse with one are relieved to be greeted with a smile and a kind word. The idea of success in the usual sense went away a long time ago. To be seen as human is enough.

I noted one large exception to this, and that is the different tracks taken by women. The marriage/no marriage, children/no children questions pressed them harder. They chose one or the other, or both, the latter having consequences of its own. Men mentioned children with some joy and pride, but might not mention them at all.  Women provided their status on that quickly, and felt the need to explain. They had not married, but they wanted you to know they were still socially successful, with very good friends and fulfilling activities. Or, they had had children, but they had not just had children - they had done creditable things in the world of work as well, they were quick to declare. Some were defensive, even angry and critical of the other sets of choices. Some seemed more comfortable with however things turned out.

Except if they kept talking, a few of them had that same resentment, defensiveness, and apology leak out. I did not keep track of the percentages - I was too busy talking. I'm sure someone's got numbers on the levels of regret either way. It is far less so among men.  The usual explanation is the expectations placed upon women in our society, but I have grown suspicious of this.  I think it is true enough, but inadequate to explain. I think the question of children occurs to women in all societies. Pregnancy is obvious. Even young and unmarried girls have the awareness "my body could do that, amiright?" For boys that is more distant. So females make their peace with that - or don't - one way or the other. It is just always going to be closer to the surface with them, talking with cousins, coworkers...and of course their mothers, who rather obviously in the group that had children. So if you decide not to, you are going to be in a ddifferent group from her, even if that is unsaid.* Whole books have been written about that in the last few generations. Even women who hate sex or hate men come up against the highly visible capabilities of their own bodies and have female friends to boot. I have nothing to add. I only note that this is a whole axis of success/failure that operates 24/7. Even women who are completely comfortable with their choices, so far as I can see, are touchy and defensive if they believe others will think they have made the wrong choices and are thus a failure. They get quick to point out how good they are at being aunts. There is no comparable defensiveness among men that they are really good uncles.  Perhaps there is no escape and little that men can do to help women in this matter, only harm.

You see it in men as well, but more distant, less pressing.  More to come on that a few paragraphs down. 

I think there is a large difference between women who never saw much advantage in marriage, or even more in having children as opposed to those where it is rather obvious that "no one ever asked." I know a few. Married men look at that group and see it as mixed. Man, someone should have asked that one. She is a way better deal than half the wives of friends of mine.  I wonder how it happened?  Was the timing just wrong the few times things looked promising? The correct husband showed up when she was 20, but she wasn't that interested until she was 30? Dunno. Anyway, it's a shame. Again, I won't offer much opinion here.  I get the impression that women go over this territory much more thoroughly with each other.

But there is a third group, which did not marry because it was all just excuses.  They didn't want to commit, didn't want to give, and they need something that sounds better. 

Women don't talk about career failure as much, at least in my generation. There may be some residual attitude that "Well, you at least had a career.  We won't inquire too closely beyond that. That was accomplishment enough." Men don't get that benefit - maybe they do now, in a different economy - and show that same defensiveness we saw in women in the preceding paragraphs.

I am seeing something new, though there may be selection bias. I am hearing men at retirement or near retirement ages talk more about wisdom and meaning and importance. They want to show that they have learned things about life, that they have understood things. They talk about what they want to teach to those younger, and where they have found ways to pass this on. I don't want you to think I was only about making money, or rising in my field. There's more to life than that. It is not as if I never heard such things when they were thirty, but there seems to be more of it at seventy. It fits the stereotypes, certainly.