A wonderful feature of modern times is that almost everyone is living a long time. Global life expectancy in 2016 was 72 years – 74 years for women and about 70 years for men. Over the past hundred years, women’s roles have expanded to include all the functions that used to be male specialities. Americans have women fighter pilots. Women are heads of corporations. Because people are living so long, it’s as if they live three or four lifetimes in sequence or simultaneously.
Along with this increase in freedom comes an increase in expectations. It is as if every woman is supposed to be Superwoman. A full-on mother and also entrepreneur and social activist and wife and friend and athlete. This is wonderful, and exhausting. Guilt over not actually being Superwoman is now part of the female experience.
Part of daily meditative experience for women is sensing the fatigue and burned nerves that come from doing it all. If you can feel it you can heal it.
In meditation we bathe in this set of conflicting opposites: the call to be all that you can be, and the need to know your limitations. This changes daily, for as we push up against our limitations, sometimes we get stronger and they change. It’s like working out. Other limitations are more fixed. There are only so many minutes in a day (1440 to be exact).
Whether you are male, female, or a nonspecified gender, you will at some point be confronted with the fact that you are not Superwhatever. And there is an odd form of shame and guilt that arises when you realize this. Accept this shame and plunge into it. There are many skills inside this that you will only learn by practice and paying attention. The process is similar to working out on a muscular level. There is a science to pushing yourself just enough that you can heal up overnight. People who push too much without rest can develop chronic injuries. It is an eternal struggle: the striving to do more and awareness of your limitations.
