Writing in today’s G2 section of The Guardian, Lionel Shriver asks why it is not acceptable for a modern woman to want to fall in love to be her chiefmost aspiration. The article is worth reading, but this made me think:

Yet I would still commend the old-fashioned sequence of 1) fall in love; 2) have kids. Otherwise, what’s left is career.

A lot of people probably think that if you’re not going to raise a family, the only valid aspiration is a career. They’re probably middle-class, Guardian readers, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong - I’ve no desire to work in a bakery - but there are things I want beyond working a fifty-hour week and/or having a family. First and foremost, I want to have fun. There’s a lot of cant about ‘work hard, play hard’ and it really is unreconstituted drivel. I don’t want to work every hour God sends because I want to spend time with my friends, I want to go to an art gallery and I want not to do anything. I want to be involved in my community and the Labour party. Hell, I might want to be a councillor or a JP. I want to work on my blog. I want to build my own computer and a Stirling engine. I want to read a lot of things.

There is an option other than family or career - developing yourself for no reason other than you want to and it’s fun. I say ‘there is’; I should say ‘there should be’.

xD.

Posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Categories: Journalism, Philosophy.
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