A Room (and Time) of One’s Own
Change your life, and you can change the world.
Do you ever get hit with the realization of just how much certain decisions you’ve made have impacted your life? The single most impactful decision of my life so far was to attend Smith College.
If you don’t know, Smith College is a historically women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts. I’m from California and I’d never even visited Massachusetts before orientation. I knew no one at the school or in the state. It was a huge leap of faith for me.
I could only hope that receiving an education from such a rigorous and renowned institution would serve me well in the grand scheme of things or at least that it would be an experience I’d thoroughly enjoy. Both of those things turned out to be completely true in expected and unexpected ways.
Paradise Pond, Smith College.
Before I stand on my soapbox, I want to acknowledge the privileges that have allowed me to build the life (and future) that I have, since my situation is unique and not easily accessible to most.
The ability to get into a good college, as an able-bodied and neurotypical white woman who had a stable home life and wildly supportive parents, is an immense privilege. The resources to go to any college, even if I am in debt because of it, also isn’t lost on me. Nor is the amount of privilege I have to now feel secure in my finances and relatively secure about my ability to find another job if I lose the one I have. Additionally, the job I have is both somewhat fulfilling and rarely demanding. It lets me hone a multitude of skills I’m interested in to support something I’m passionate about.
Even more than that though, the incredible amount of control this job allows me to maintain over my time is the ultimate privilege. Spending that time working remotely from a beautiful home in a rural and gorgeous (if wildly conservative) area of California is its own bliss. My life is infinitely more comfortable than what I’d be able to afford if I weren’t living with my incredibly supportive, loving, delightful parents.
It is those privileges that have allowed me to do a lot of soul-searching and examining of my life. I’ve had ample time to reflect on my desires, my capabilities, and my dreams for myself and the world. I’ve realized that an immeasurable amount of my happiness and self-knowledge is a direct result of my living such a leisurely life. The deep sense of being unsettled that I’ve mentioned before has been at my core always. But having the privileges I do has allowed me to examine that dissatisfaction and come up with an idea of how to end or at least lessen it. It gives me a profound feeling of agency, strength, and hope.
At early points in this self-examination, I had a bit of a superiority complex. And honestly, maybe I still do to a degree. There was a sense that my intense emotions and ability to craft a robust, fulfilling, and creative life were a result of who I inherently am. Almost an ‘I’m not like other girls’ mentality, but for the majority of humanity. Very elitist and snobbish of me, I know. And even so, there could be an element of truth to it.
Perhaps, even with my exact life trajectory, other people wouldn’t come up with the dreams, conclusions, or philosophies that I have. Maybe they wouldn’t have spent their time thinking and soul-searching and trying to figure out the best way to do this thing called life. Maybe they wouldn’t have had the foresight, dedication, and discipline to spend countless hours studying in high school all in the hopes that it would help them follow a grand life plan they had devised for themselves.
However, it’s entirely possible that this kind of spirit, fire, and capability would be in most people were they given the privileges I’ve been given. It’s equally possible that I’d have the same traits and goals even if I hadn’t lived as privileged a life as I’ve had. But the truth is, we’ll never know.
That makes me feel incredibly grateful for the life I’ve had, but heartbroken for what has perhaps been stolen from those who haven’t had access to this level of privilege.
The idea that people don’t achieve higher levels of self-actualization not because they aren’t capable, but because they’ve been so bogged down by the way the world is, by the obstacles put in their way by privileges they don’t have, is devastating.
Sure, some people with very little privilege break through those obstacles and make incredible lives for themselves. But they are the exception, not the rule.
Virginia Woolf’s assertion that women need a room of their own and some financial independence to access their creativity has proven entirely true to me. While I do think women are often at a unique disadvantage when trying to improve their lives and follow their dreams, today, as throughout much of history, those disadvantages are widespread. The exact form of those disadvantages changes from person to person depending on their intersecting identities, but the inescapable struggle to just get by in today’s capitalist society weighs on everyone but the financially well-off.
The more I’ve come to appreciate the opportunities that have been available to me, the more I wish these opportunities, or at least the lack of obstacles, were universal. Essentially, the cushier my life gets, the more adamant of an intersectional feminist and socialist I seem to become. Everyone should have access to the kind of freedom, privacy, control over their time, the ability to participate in their passions, the opportunity to seek out beauty, secure knowledge that they will be safe, fed, and housed, and access to a supportive community as I do. Though tragedy and sorrow are inevitable parts of life, having these needs met would drastically improve the quality of life for every person. There’s no telling what kind of incredible things people would be capable of if this was the case.
I would argue, however, that while having any sort of minority identity brings with it its own lineup of horrible experiences and realities, it also comes with learning opportunities. I think I’ve learned the most about myself and about what I want and am capable of because of the few areas where I lack privilege. Being a woman, especially a fat woman, has forced me to take stock of life in a different way than those who don’t share either of those traits.
I often wonder what I would be like as a person if I weren’t so inherently on the outside of general society as I am. I don’t even seem to fit into the communities a person like me would theoretically fit into.
I may be a fat woman, but as a quiet, introverted, academic one, I don’t fit the mold of the most acceptable version of a fat woman in our society (who is also extremely hated and oppressed). I am not loud, attention seeking, or outwardly sexual, wearing clothes that “show off my curves.” While that may work for some fat women, and more power to them, my fatness (and confidence, make no mistake) is not easily consumable.
As a woman, I am not one who easily fits into traditional gender roles. I have too little patience, too much desire for independence, and too much disdain for household tasks, especially those that aren’t split evenly, to fit that mold.
Though I identify as a nerd, I’m not very connected to the wider nerd community. I’m passionate about my nerdy interests but don’t participate in them at the same level as the majority of the nerd community.
Even though I’m an academic, I often feel too full of emotion and creativity to bond with other academics.
Some of the people I can relate to least in the world are fellow straight women.
Instead, I float and dip between all of these different communities, always observing from a removed position.
Maybe everyone feels this way, I don’t know, but I feel like this separation has allowed me a kind of freedom to forge my own path and decide for myself what I think is important. I’ve taken an active role in deciding what traits and goals I value and what I want my life to look like.
I’m finding and crafting my identity not to better assimilate to an in-group, but as someone who has lived their whole life skirting around the edges, piecing themselves together bit by bit. The lack of privilege as a perpetual outsider has fostered an independence and devotion to my truest, happiest self.
Without an outsider’s perspective and with ample time on my hands, I likely would not have had these realizations. Most people are so busy just trying to put food on the table that they don’t have the energy to devote time to self-reflection. This doesn’t give them the opportunity to question whether the goals they’re told are worthwhile by American society at large are actually worth pursuing. They throw all their efforts into creating a life that, at the end of the day, they might not even want, but never have the chance to choose anything different.
While in today’s reality, we can’t all have the things I think we should, I don’t subscribe to the ‘that’s just the way it is’ mentality. I don’t think we should just give up hope of it ever being any different. There’s something we can all do that can get closer to that reality. If we all commit to asking ourselves some hard questions and opening up our imaginations when trying to answer them, I think we can gradually improve the world. Taking a step back from what we’re told we should want, what we’re told success is, and what we’re told is possible, we can define for ourselves what we should be working toward. We can create a different vision for what we can accomplish individually and as a society.
Of course, most of the people living the way I’m describing don’t have much time to read blogs like mine. Hell, they might not even know that blogs or lives like the one I’m trying to build exist. The way I’m trying to live doesn’t serve the grand white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalistic society we live in and is therefore hard to discover when sifting through all the media promoting the status quo.
But if you’re here, I’m proud of you. Simply reading this, you are helping disrupt the status quo, but you are also likely benefitting from some privileges, like at least an amount of free time, that many others don’t have. I hope you take a look at those privileges you’ve been awarded and think about how you can use them to make your life even better than what you’re told to want while also helping others who don’t have access to those privileges do the same.
As Sonya Renee Taylor advocates in her book, The Body is Not An Apology, if we work on radically accepting ourselves and extending that acceptance to those around us, the world can shift.
I think if we work on envisioning our most ideal lives, and not just superficially wealthy and extravagant lives we’re told we should want, but our true, ideal selves, experiences, emotions, and communities, and then commit to the small actions that will make those things a reality for ourselves, we help normalize those ideal realities.
As the intentional crafting of our individual lives spreads, I believe the impact of that work will inspire others to do the same. In a sort of ground-up domino effect, I believe society at large will gradually improve for all.
So take some time to do some self-reflection. What is truly important to you? What do you want your life to look like, deep down? If the barriers you’ve been told are inevitable didn’t exist, what would your ideal daily life look like? Once you think deeply about those questions, get creative with ways you can bring yourself closer to that reality, even with the inevitable obstacles that exist.
Seize your life and make it your own. Then, encourage the people you know to do the same.
I firmly believe that even small disruptions of the status quo can have dramatic ripple effects. Change your life, and you can change the world.
