A friend of mine went to her alumni dinner some days back and came back rather disgusted. My friend has not been working for the past few years because of illness and other crisis in the family. She's what you would call a housewife and Femina would stylishly call homemaker. At the dinner, teeming with ex-friends and ex-batchmates who are now AVPs, VPs, CEOs, GMs, TLs and suchlike my friend says she felt like shit. And it wasn't because she realised what she had been missing all along. It's because most of the her ex-batchmates recoiled in polite horror when she came up with an honest answer to THE question: So what have you been doing?
Nothing much, she replied. I married soon after we graduated, had two kids and have been basically at home with them.
"Their look said it all. It's almost as if I was nothing. Not being a working woman or having had a career," she said.
You can't blame her, given the super achiever CVs that were dropping off people's lips the moment THE question was asked.
Why is it that achievement is always measured in such tangible terms? Where do you work or what do you do and how much you make? Why do we tend to look at a woman, label her a housewife and think she has done "nothing with her life" simply because she chooses not to work?
It's a tricky argument I know. With no side doing anything right or wrong. What really matters, and this took my silly brain years to figure out, is what you enjoy doing. And if it is setting up your home, taking care of it and being there, so be it. If it is being at work, getting things done, getting a high when you take over a new team, touchwood.
My friend married her boyfriend right out of the institute whose alumni dinner she attended. The boyfriend-turned-husband was setting up his own business and had a family that was on a rather rocky patch due to several reasons. Without being asked or pressurised or being forced to as is generally assumed, she decided to help him set up his thing and be around for his folks at home till the rough times were over. Before she knew it she had one kid, followed by another and in her own words, never found much time to get herself a job she liked.
But instead of just lounging at home watching serials, baking pancakes and chasing the kids to eat (as the popular cliched image goes), she has been going about a lot of work. The kind she liked doing, without anyone asking her to.
She has been the husband's unofficial consultant/telephone operator in the arly years/brochure designer/content editor and the family's anchor, financial planner, head chef, travel guide for many many years. She's one of the most content people I know and one look at her and you know she is no pushover. Doesn't that count as achievement?
Apparently not. You need to be earning a salary in multiple figures to qualify for that. In the process you may have ignored your home, kids and relationships but who cares? You earn. You hold an important sounding designation. That's all that matters. And before anyone jumps on me, I'm not saying working women ignore their homes and children. If you think that you are missing the woods for the trees so stop reading :)
My friend did try to take up a job once, after her first child. She had a supportive family and good help so she gave in to everyone saying 'Don't waste your talent!' and started work. She lasted five months. "Because this is where my talent was. I loved being home. I loved doing craft with my kids, taking them to the park, cycling. I loved all that," she used to tell me, when the monkey was smaller and I used to be perpetually confused about to work or not to work. "I see myself doing this all my life and still being happy and if you can't see yourself doing it forever, you should get a job."
It settled my mind and I decided to freelance. Because I couldn't get away from the child and I couldn't see myself enjoying craft and staying away from work either. Even if it amounted to almost nothing in terms of money. And today my mind is settled. I know this is what I'll be doing. Working from home. Perhaps increasing the volume as time goes on but perhaps never taking up a fulltime job, unless circumstances demand it.
But this isn't about me. It's about my friend who is very clear in her mind about what she wants. She has good degrees, she has intelligence and the required amount of smartness to get some kind of a job if she wants. She's a favourite in her family. She's built bridges between broken relationships, mended illnesses and done a thousand other things many of us are too timid or indifferent to attempt. Yet in her hi-profile alumni dinner she feels like nothing because she doesn't hold a job, an enviable salary and a blackberry. Not fair, this achievement calculator.