Some say pictures are worth 1000 words. However, images only give a glimpse at real meaning. We interpret so much in what we see from our own lived experience and inner thoughts. Even while words can try to convey the true meaning intended, each person reads and interprets. We all have our point of view, whether we be understood, whether we be heard, and sometimes whether we be seen, or even feel seen. We can use words to try to share our voice, whether it be through poetry, creative writing, non-fiction, creative nonfiction, or memoir, which is the heart of what we know from our own reality and what we can document as truthfully as we can.
It is for this reason I like to write in all genres.
I share this image because it depicts me in a way I would like in some ways to be seen (and would like to feel).
We look young-ish, happy, and carefree. Some interpret we appear privileged and other identities that could be true or not true.
Does this image show a background depicting our lived experience?
Intersections of identities.
First-generation college students.
Our whiteness, but also identities of disadvantage.
Abuses. Struggles socioeconomically.
Our multicultural identities.
Times I slept in alternative options or lived in a van to “make it work.”
Challenges with sense of belonging- anywhere.
Ways we navigate the system.
Our different ways of finding place in society?
Somehow, I don’t think so.
Here, I had been “let go” from my teaching position. Well, all of us had been actually. They called it “restructuring” and to avoid age discrimination, or others forms of discrimination, such as those who had a family of dependents or higher insurance costs, the university opted to lay off all the faculty in one go. Hire back selectively under a new paradigm.
Buyouts were offered.
Some taken.
For some of us, we hadn’t been there long enough to consider the buyout worth taking. For me, seven years. For some, they had already worked forty years (or longer) and were now in their 80s but unwilling to retire because it also meant losing an ID card, insurance coverage, and a chosen way of life and place of belonging, living overseas.
We empathized with each other in our different losses and grieved collectively.
Thus, I retired. Signed up for a pension. This at least kept me in a system for health insurance. Yippee! $40 a month for the rest of my life. What would I make of this?
I am 50.
I longed for a new path. A transformation.
But, the story doesn’t end here.
This moment in time, I am working at a new professor job. I am also a student again. I’m trying to make my way presenting work at a conference. “Publish or perish” so I’m told.
With that task done, my partner (my husband), and I have decided to combine the use of the flight with work.
For me, the conference.
For him, a visit to the rocket launch facility at Cape Canaveral connected to his work.
For me, learning about the local sustainability of native species along the Canaveral National Seashore.
For him, renting a convertible so that we could experience the good weather and the sun. (It’s spring in Florida while it’s still just the thawing winter in Minnesota).
For me, I agree that some Vitamin D conversion would be therapeutic.
For him it is a selfish gift. He wants the experience of a convertible (a cabrio he calls it), but he also wants to make me happy. “You’ll be able to see the birds and the alligators easier.”
I can and I am. Happy.
Choices.
We all make them in different ways and for different reasons. Sometimes people judge. Sometimes people don’t understand the choices we make or why. They see images and make assumptions. Ahhh… the dangers of social media!
It is during a mentoring phone call to a new faculty member that we pull off the road, so I can listen. “Oh!” I exclaim as a leathered, shiny alligator pops up from the marsh I am looking at next to the car. I have to explain on the phone the reason for my pleased surprise as his bulging eyes continue to peer at me.
Sometimes we have to slow down to see the beauty.
Sometimes we make bigger choices for the greater good.
Why did I choose to open up my house for others to live in?
Well, if I’m not always there, then the house is empty. What a waste.
If the house is too big for two, then why not have a third, or even a fourth, in the spare room?
If we open our mind, sometimes by working a little harder, we can make choices that although may cost the environment more in one way, can also provide life’s simple little pleasures, but a more global balance overall. We try to justify our choices and our responsibilities by doing a little bit more work in order to make our lives count.
Not all will agree.
It’s also not just “one and done”.
It takes daily practice, persistence, and when we slip and fall, we pick ourselves up again, and we keep walking the walk.
Though images may not show it all, hopefully the words also help start us talking the talk.