Pursuing our passions
Interesting women, frustration and a big burst
I’ve spent all of yesterday in the garden. Not working, but reading, laughing at my neighbour’s family putting in a new fence and observing the insects and birds. It was a glorious warm and sunny day.
My plan for the day was to finish two books I was reading. I’ve managed to finish the first one (The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell) by 8:30 in the morning. The other one (Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer, but for me it was the original Dutch version, pictured above) took me a bit longer as I was distracted by all the fence happenings behind my back.
Bird Cottage tells the story of Len Howard, who was living with birds and wrote two books about them. Lately I’m attracted to books about people, especially women, who were brave enough to live the life they wanted to live, even when nobody understood them. I’m also (very slowly) reading a book about Polish female artists in Montparnasse at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were not allowed to study at the Academy of Art (in Poland, nor in France) and were finding another ways to study and pursue their passion. I can only imagine how hard it was, they had to fight for it and made lots of sacrifices for their art and passion.
The stories like these are not only inspiring, but also show (at least to me) how easy we have it now. Yes, there are some gate keepers, but nobody can tell us that we can’t paint or that we shouldn’t do our own research into the subject that interests us. We can decide that we want to pursue something and just do it. We don’t have to leave our family for it, we don’t need to go hungry for it.
In my case, the fiercest gate keeper standing in my way is myself. There’s no one telling me I can’t pursue my passions, that whatever I want to do isn’t suitable for a lady, that I should be happy with what I have and find myself a good husband and give him children (OK, the last one happened a few times in my life, because still (too) many people think a woman can’t be truly happy without her own children), or that I can’t go to university.
My frustration with myself is rising to a level where it may burst. I only hope it will be a happy burst and it will push me in the right direction.
