An essay of mine called Regrets Undone, about (finally) completing my Ph.D., has been featured on Long Story Short, An Ezine for Writers. The one cocktail party question I’ve dreaded so much that I move across the room, away from the hors d'oeuvre platter just to avoid facing it. “So, what exactly is it that you do?” It’s a question that packs enough ammunition to transform me into mumbling scatterbrain. “Excuse me, I see someone I really need to say hello to.” Is an escape-clause I’ve developed when I even sniff that someone on the verge of asking it. And how is it that grownups, a group of which I’m a member, think nothing of asking such a personal question of a total stranger in the most casual of tones?
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Marlene,
ReplyDeleteI love this essay--you made me laugh, and smile, and laugh again at myself for the times I have been in the same type of situation, comparing myself to others. The lemon line cracks me up...I think I'll restock my fruit bowl. Today!
Tania- thanks so much for your feedback. It's really a challenge to avoid the comparison game but I've learned (finally) that with each gain or choice we make is that one we had to relinquish. And years later, those choices we think we gave up weren't really worth hanging on to. Let us not forget Robert Frost's words of wisdom. See below:
ReplyDeleteThe Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost