dare to dream

Asking for what we want

About a week before Christmas, my daughter Miranda asked me if the two of us could go see The Nutcracker.

She seems to want more mom-daughter time of late. Perhaps because she's getting older, perhaps because she feels 'work time' is displacing 'mom time'. (My friend Stacey has encouraged me me to share the challenges of my recent on-ramping. There are many; one day I'll go into more detail.)

For now, it's enough to know that one of the challenges is -- my children liked having mom around more, and now that I'm around less, they miss me. So I wasn't all that surprised that Miranda suggested a girls' night out.

What did surprise me was her ability to articulate so easily what she wanted. Because -- I just don't know that many women (including myself) who ask for what we want all that well.

Think about it.

When was the last time that a woman you know (or you yourself) asked simply and directly for something?

No martyrdom, no manipulation, etc., etc, -- just stated their want (without making it a need) and asked.

That's what I thought.

In Anna Fels' article titled Do Women Lack Ambition?, she writes that our cultural ideals of femininity do not include women asking for resources, whether those resources involve time, money, praise. If we do ask, we feel selfish, and others are likely to believe us to be selfish as well.

This Christmas there were many lovely gifts given and received (including my Blackberry Curve), but taking Miranda to see The Nutcracker (as my mother did me), and hearing her ask for this outing, without even a nanosecond's worry that she would be jeopardizing her femininity, was without a doubt, among the best gifts.

When was the last time that you were direct about what you wanted? For example, just today, when I wanted something I'd left in the car, instead of asking my husband, "Will you go out to the car and get me x", I said "Are you going out to the car?"

Do you know an adult woman who ask for what she wants -- and gets it? What can we learn from her?

What can we do to encourage our daughters to continue asking, and believing they'll receive?

P.S. Is this one happy girl or what?

Related posts:

Rachel vs. Leah: reclaiming the power to dream
Throw down your pom-poms
Psyche's 3rd Task: Fill the Flask
NY Times article: For Girls, It's Be Yourself...
Psyche and choice

Children and the call to adventure

My 11 year-old son David recently got a 100% on his geography test.

I was thrilled.

In part, because I've handed my own ambition to him (if he looks good, I look good), but it was more than that.

David had studied, and because he'd studied, he knew the Asian countries and capitals cold. In light of a conversation we'd had just a few weeks prior, this was quite important.

Here's the redux.

"David, you got an 18 out of 24 on your Wordly Wise exam. I don't quite understand how you can be so articulate and not do well on vocabulary tests."

"Mom, a B+ when I'm just winging it is pretty good."

"You're right David, it is pretty good."

Photo courtesy of Marcelo Wain

But David, "winging it" and "pretty good"?

"How are you going to do the good you were meant to do with "pretty good" as your watchword? The world will be just fine if you don't do that good, but will you be?"

What I didn't say, but thought, because this interchange was not entirely about him (one of the burdens of being the oldest child), was this:

If I dare and dream, and dream and dare some more, only to have my children Not dream, or they dream, but haven't the competence needed to make their dream happen, then what?

So, am I pleased that my son is learning about capitals and countries?

Absolutely.

But his learning to be competent, to prepare for his call to adventure, to do the good he was meant to do -- makes my heart sing.

P.S. My son has read and approved the publication of this post.

What can we as parents do to help our children feel a sense of responsibility to build on what we've given them (while forgiving us for our not-so-good) to make the world a better place?

Is framing their life as a hero's journey helpful?

How do we keep a vision of the "good our children are meant to do" top-of-mind?

Is the angst I'm feeling pretty typical for moms of 11 year-old boys? Or should I be more concerned, and re-read Madeline Levine's The Price of Privilege?

Related posts:

The hero's journey
The hero's journey and accountability
Mum's the word
Google's lesson on dreams vs. expectations
Seeing with new eyes

Of pineapples and friendship

With the holiday season upon us, I wanted you to know how profoundly grateful I am to each of you. For reading, commenting, and most especially for your daring and dreaming.

As a token of my appreciation, I'd like to share with you Irene Chan's delightful illustration of a pineapple, the centuries-old symbol of warmth and hospitality. During the colonial era, pineapples were considered a gift of royal privilege because they were so rare, and therefore expensive. Though no longer difficult to come by, the symbolism endures. Perhaps because pineapples require effort to enjoy. Between the harvesting, peeling (the prickliness!) and coring, pineapples are no apple or banana.

Photo courtesy of www.eneri.net

Can't the same be said of 21st-century friendship? Though there are people aplenty in our lives, harvesting relationships filled with warmth and hospitality requires effort, including the occasional prickle.

What I love, though, is that in both instances, if we'll do the work, we are richly rewarded with fruit, and friendship, both of which are almost indescribably delicious.

dare. dream. delicious.

Tell your soundtrack story: High school, cheerleading and finding true love

In analyzing my teenage 'tell your story' soundtrack, I observed a thing or two about myself. Not so much the need for story edits, but definitely some insights, clues as to what I might want to think about as I write my story into the future.

But more on that later.

As you scan this iMix, you'll see that, as a teenager, daring to dream for me was largely about becoming a cheerleader and finding true love. Piano and grades had become inconsequential, and angst was now on the scene: so much of living gets compressed into those four years.

Which songs best tell the story of your teenage years? What do your song choices say about your emerging and shifting priorities as you moved out of childhood?

Nature Boy -- Nat King Cole's music bound me to my grandparents (first heard his music at my grandparents' home) and parents (my mom heard him live in San Francisco before he died), even as I began to individuate. I think this song put to music some of the sadness of those years -- thrilled to be growing up. And not.

Still the One -- In 8th grade, I went to see the Castillero Jr. High songgirls perform. After watching these pretty, and seemingly popular, girls perform to this song, I knew I wanted to be just like them.

Play That Funky Music -- At the first school dance I remember attending, the DJ played this song, and I reveled in the abandon. (I don't know about you, but I am intrigued by the fact that at every age there have been songs that remind me just how much I longed to imagine and explore.)

Always and Forever -- Being in love, and having my heart broken, for the first time. Ironic that I chose a tune which referred to 'always' and 'forever'.

Can't Hide Love -- Though the song makes me so, so happy today, as a 16 year-old, 'Can't Hide Love' always made me think of two boys (they don't know it of course) to whom I had given my heart.

Related posts:
Tell your soundtrack story: Part I
Tell your soundtrack story: Part II
What I've learned by identifying my heros
imagine and Explore
Getting gratitude

P.S. Because I need to figure out a technical thing or two, look for the the second half of my soundtrack story in January.

Tell your soundtrack story: Pre-teen, Stevie Wonder on the scene

Definitely, definitely consider creating a musical mix for your children, grandchildren.

As I pull together these songs, limiting myself to only five songs (constraints can be a good thing), I am not only sharing the highlights of my soundtrack story, I am finding that I'm re-writing certain portions -- edits can be a very good thing.

But more on that later.

Without further ado, here is Part II, memorable songs from my pre-teen years:

I Woke Up in Love This Morning -- My crush on David Cassidy was so HUGE. I still have a picture of myself standing by a poster of him in my bedroom. And, as I've shared previously, it was remarkable to me that Shirley Jones could be an ingenue AND a mother.

I am Woman -- We would listen to Helen Reddy on an 8-track player as my mom would taxi me to ice skating. I LOVED taking ice skating lessons; gliding over the ice I felt such my sense of self surge. In hindsight, I'm laughing that I liked this song so much; my desire to affirm 'us girls' seems to have started at the tender age of 10-11.

Come, Come Ye Saints -- Singing this hymn always moved me, an homage to both my spiritual heritage and family roots, especially of my pioneer ancestors that settled southern Arizona.

Don't you Worry 'Bout a Thing -- My lifetime love affair with all things Spanish/Latin America began at an early age, with my birth actually: my children even think that we are part Spanish. But not sure why I have such a love for the music of Stevie Wonder. Perhaps because his lyrics give utterance to my deepest feelings/longings in a way that few musicians can and do.

Ease on Down the Road -- Another happy, carefree song, that encourages me to imagine and explore, to face my fear.

Related posts:

Tell your Soundtrack Story: Part I
What I've Learned by identifying my heros
Finding our Reality in reality TV
Asking and answering the big questions
Rock climbing and rethinking our competence

Tell your soundtrack story: Of childhood and Christmas

Have you ever wondered:

What if my great grandmother had bequeathed to me an iPod (suspend your disbelief for a moment) with songs that had inspired her?

What if she had annotated her musical mix with a sentence or two saying why these songs had been meaningful to her?

In short, what if she had told her story with a soundtrack to her life?

On the odds that I will someday be a great grandmother, and because I do have an iPod, I hereby bequeath to my children Part I of my soundtrack story (thanks to iMix), the music which inspired me as a child, as well as my best-loved Christmas songs.

What songs were most meaningful to you as a child? Why?

Which Christmas songs do you cherish?

What if you were to create your own iMix and e-mail it to your children and grandchildren as a last minute Christmas gift?

Do-re-mi -- The Sound of Music, which I saw for the first time at San Jose's domed Century theaters next to the Winchester Mystery House, was the catalyst for my playing the piano. I still remember plunking out 'do -- a deer, a female deer' when I was three. Given that I have only two memories from when I was three, need I say more?

Melody -- I played this by Robert Schumann at my first piano recital, around the age of 7. I loved to play the piano; playing well nurtured my growing sense of self.

Six Grande Etudes after Paganinni -- My family listened to Andre Watts almost every Sunday; as an 8-9 year old, hearing Watts play (and also seeing him in concert) encouraged my dream of becoming a concert pianist.

Abide with Me, 'Tis Eventide -- As I sat in our chapel on Cherry Street late one Sunday afternoon, the singing of this hymn, stirred deep spiritual feelings within me. It is the first memory of this kind.

Everybody Wants To Be a Cat -- The Aristocats was so real to my 8 year-old self. This particular song was rowdy, and happy, and tapped into a creative impulse which manifested itself in my sister and I making up dances. Remember the kind: carefree, uninhibited dances that only young children are capable of doing.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year -- Whenever I heard Andy Williams belting out this song, the Christmas season had officially begun.

Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker -- My mother took my sister and I to San Francisco every year to see the Nutcracker when I was growing up. Even today, I thrill at the music which accompanies the Christmas tree growing and growing and growing. It was pure magic!

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas -- I could have chosen the entire Carpenters' Christmas Portrait, but this song best recalls the occasional longing I felt for home as a 21 year-old on a mission in Uruguay.

Vince Guaraldi's 'Oh Tannenbaum' -- If there is an album that most recalls our happy decade in Manhattan, it's this one. And because I still daydream about becoming Diana Krall's younger sister (musically speaking), 'Oh Tannenbaum' is one of my favorites.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day -- Definitely my favorite Christmas song. When I sing "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep", my heart swells with gratitude for the birth and life and death of Jesus Christ.

Related posts:

NY Times: This is your life (and how you tell it)
Your very own song?
It takes courage to tell our stories
Triangulating on our story
A quote to dream by: Robert Atkinson

Why we tell our story

Will you enjoy with me a poem by Carol Lynn Pearson?

Titled 'Journal', it beautifully captures one of the many reasons we tell our story.

Journal

Put the thought
In words
And the words in ink
In a page in a book
In a very private place
Like under a mattress.

A sacred process
Wonderful as alchemy
Is at work
Even in the dark
While you sleep
Making something better
Than history:

Understanding.

Related posts:

A poem to dream by: Carol Lynn Pearson
Fields of love
It takes courage to tell our stories
Mourning Virginia Tech
Storytellers wanted

Asking and answering the big questions

I recently attended the last day of Professor Clayton Christensen's fall semester class at Harvard Business School.

In his final minutes with eighty of the world's best and brightest 25-35 year-olds, there was so much that Professor Christensen could have used his bully pulpit to say. Interestingly he chose to focus not on building and sustaining a successful enterprise, as he had done all semester, but rather on building and sustaining a happy life.

Paraphrasing Dr. Christensen's remarks, "In just a few months you will graduate from Harvard Business School, and embark on what to many, including yourselves, will be prestigious, lucrative, high profile careers. But if you want to also have happy lives, you need to know the purpose of your life."

Photo courtesy of Jorge Antonio, istockphoto

He concluded class by encouraging the students to take the time, even if it's between 11 and 12 each night, as he did some thirty years ago, while he himself was in graduate school, to figure out their 'who they are', and 'what they are meant to do.'

There was a tear or two.

In Howard Gardner's groundbreaking theory on multiple intelligences, he outlines eight different type of intelligences. The first two, logical-mathematical and linguistic, aptitudes most valued by our society, are no doubt strengths of HBS students.

But what of kinesthetic, interpersonal, musical, naturalist, spatial, perhaps most importantly, existential intelligence -- to make meaning of our life -- the intelligence to which I believe Dr. Christensen was referring?

Many of us do not have graduate degrees, including myself. Even fewer have degrees from an Ivy League school.

Which is why I found Dr. Christensen's words so encouraging.

Because to be existentially intelligent, even credentialed, we don't need a degree, we just need to know how to ask and answer the really big questions, like -- what's our story meant to be? How do we become the hero of our story? The hero of support in others' stories?

Which intelligences do you possess?

Have you ever considered yourself existentially intelligent?

What is your story meant to be?

Will you resolve to be the hero of your story?

And the hero of support in others' stories?

Related posts:

Seeing with new eyes
Play to your strengths
What we can learn from TLC's 'I've Got Nothing to Wear'
What I learned about seeing from my glasses
Rock climbing and rethinking our competence

It takes courage to tell our stories

It is sounds so easy.

When we suffer loss, if we'll talk of our loss with others, we'll more quickly work through, and learn lessons, from the loss.

That's what psychologists who study trauma say.

A different set of psychologists -- those who study women in our society -- say that talking of our sadness, mourning out loud, if you will, requires us to appear vulnerable, needy even.

Which we are loathe to do.

So, we need to talk, but we don't.

Which is why two blogs I read this week were so moving.

Macy Robison, wrote of the loss of her mother, in Mom, while Jennifer Judd-McGee, reluctantly talked of her stepbrother's death, in an entry titled bittersweet.

After you listen to -- and bear witness -- to their stories, will you take a moment to thank them for their courage?

What story of loss have you yet to articulate, to make meaning of?

Related posts:

Tell your story
Storytime by Ashley Goldberg
Three cheers for oxytocin
Making meaning in Malawi
Handicrafts for the hero's journey

Et tu, Whitney?

"It is only when an anomaly is identified....that the opportunity to improve theory occurs." Paul Carlile, Clayton Christensen

In responding to "An 'A' or an 'F' on the Galadriel test?" in which I discussed my love-hate relationship with the Twilight trilogy, Amy politely wondered if I would feel as I do had these books been penned by a man.

Specifically, Amy asked, "Is there more to your view than expecting more of people because we know their beliefs? Does it goes back to your discussion of what it means to be feminine? Perhaps your ideas about women and ambition are broader than you had supposed. That it's not just about large-scale power, but rather any time women move outside of perceived guidelines our society squirms?"

A is for Amy, anomaly, and Amy appears to be absolutely right.

I have read over 25 books by Orson Scott Card, another fellow Mormon. Yet I've never had the kind of visceral reaction to his books, frequent Ten Commandment non-compliance notwithstanding, as I did to Meyers' book.

Do you remember the Bem Sex-Role Inventory's finding that women are only feminine within the context of a relationship and when we are giving something (resources, recognition) to someone else?

And isn't it true, that when women move beyond perceived guidelines (as did Ms. Meyer), we are crossing into a territory in which we are not sovereign, and are thus figuratively taking something from someone else?

Et tu, apply the double standard Whitney?

Lamentably, yes.

What are your thoughts?

Related posts:

An 'A' or an 'F' on the Galadriel test?
Why we are skeptical of Hillary Clinton
Do you need to 'Do it yourself?'
NY Times -- For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Throw down your pom-poms
A space for women's voices