If a problem has no name, is it really a problem?

Lately, I've been mentally bogged down by a morbid interest in feminism—what it is, what it isn't, what it means to me. I've come to the conclusion that I can't care anymore. I often feel angry and bored, but it's not because of any patriarchal agenda or oppressive system. It's because it is a real challenge to deal all day long with a little person who is learning what free will and independence is (while at the same time being clingy). It's damn hard. My husband says he understands, but he doesn't have to live it. It's not his fault that he doesn't have to do it and I do. I chose to stay home with my kid during her early years. I could have put her in daycare after my 16 weeks of leave (DC FMLA is relatively long). But, I didn't. We didn't need the money and it seemed like the right thing to do. More than seemed like it. I have, still, strong convictions that it is the right thing to do. But, it is damn hard.

I think this thing of staying at home with a kid drew me into reading about feminist issues because of all the "mommy war" debates about working vs. staying home, how long to breastfeed, etc. etc. etc. Somehow feminism creeps into all these things. I think maybe those women who can't take it, can't take the staying home with the young kids might sometimes use the high-minded concepts of feminism to justify their working. They are doing what's important for womankind, for their identities and all that. They are not throwing away all the years of hard work of the women who have gone before, like Betty Friedan who famously examined the housewife's ennui and yearning for something more—a "problem that has no name." Of course, many other women have to work for financial reasons (or believe they do).

But, back to this problem that has no name. I got to thinking, if you can't name the problem, is it really a problem? Is the boredom or sense of being adrift just a symptom of being "spoiled" or part of the disease of our contemporary consumer culture? It sounds like alot of what Betty Friedan describes in her first chapter of The Feminine Mystique is related to having things too easy and too tied into material goods and status. She writes about a change that occured in the mid-20th century, from a time in the earlier part of the century, the 20s, where more women actually went to college and a century earlier had fought for the right to higher education. So what happened? A war. Commercialism. Why did women let it happen? Why did they let things be taken away from them? Everyday men were just pawns in the game like women. All this seems so far removed from my reality now. I sit and wonder whether there was really a single problem that united women, or rather just a bunch of individual problems.

When can we ever rest? When will it be enough? I read so much online that claims to be "feminist" which says nothing to me about my life. And I am a woman. The voices that call for this policy or that policy, that complain about not enough of this or that, always uttering some kind of discontent, some slight, they sound so...tired. And they make me tired trying to keep up with them all and formulate my opinion. Meanwhile, my child is growing up and I'm missing it. My husband is living a parallel life alongside me and I've drifted from engagement with him because my mind has been embroiled in all...this.

It was made worse when I watched Revolutionary Road on the plane from Barcelona and was so moved and impressed by it. I was ashamed to identify ways in which I saw I was similar to the crazy lead woman, April Wheeler. Til she got progressively more crazed, then I breathed a sigh of relief. I found myself feeling sorry for her husband, who did cheat on her, but who seemed desperately to just want their little life to be OK. She wanted more. But, couldn't she find happiness in her children or her husband, or reading books, or making gourmet meals, or painting, or masturbating, or martinis? I mean, what you don't allow yourself to enjoy in your own private life has little to do with cultural mores and more to do with your own hangups or pathological discontent, doesn't it? Now I am reading the book. It doesn't have to be about just feminism, although that aspect of it can't be denied. A Huffington Post blogger says, "Revolutionary Road shows what life was like for women before feminism. It's an important history lesson from the not too distant past. Watch it and read The Feminine Mystique and be thankful that there was a feminist movement or who knows what life would be like now." Still, I have my doubts about the degree to which feminism was part of Richard Yates' intended message. There's the whole ball of wax about what matters in life and what doesn't, transcending suburbia, holding on to the idea that you're meant for something more—and all of these things can be felt by both men and women.

My answer is a spiritual one. The only way I can survive is to break into meditation in the things I do. Of course, on the surface it may be mind-numbing to do housework or play with a toddler. (I do have my consulting work to "escape" to, and countless books and websites, too...but still...) When you can see beyond the surface of a "task" or activity—the pattern of the rug you're cleaning, the beauty of the wood grain you're polishing, the leaves dancing on the trees outside, the blue, blue sky, the sparkle in the toddler's eyes as she proudly identifies orange, red, blue, green, her voice as it now forms sentences, the sweet creaminess of homemade salt caramels, the bold zestiness of homemade salsa—you can groove on these "mundane"' things and they can make a life. The longing for your husband's scruffy kiss after his day away...I could go on and on. It doesn't have to be all bad. It doesn't have to be a problem.

Of course, I am living in the 21st century and I have the world handed to me on a platter, practically. It must have been different for women before. I have to live my life in the here and now, though. We don't have tons of money. We probably aren't rich by American standards at all, and yet I want for nothing material. My life is pretty good, actually, and feminism is, frankly, a buzzkill.