Poetry Mondays: La Reina

One of the highlights of living in Santiago was being introduced to the works of Pablo Neruda. He was a notorious womanizer, but reading his poetry, it's hard not to see why women fell for him so consistently.

******

La Reina

Yo te he nombrado reina.
Hay más altas que tú,
mas altas.
Hay más puras que tú,
más puras.
Hay más bellas que tú,
hay más bellas.
Pero tú eres la reina.

Cuando vas por las calles nadie te reconoce.
Nadie ve tu corona de cristal, nadie mira la alfombra de oro rojo
que pisas donde pasas, la alfombra que no existe.

Y cuando asomas
suenan todos los ríos
en mi cuerpo, sacuden
el cielo las campanas,
y un himno llena el mundo.

Sólo tú y yo,
sólo tú y yo, amor mío,
lo escuchamos.

******

Translated (Courtesy of Poemhunter)

I have named you queen.
There are taller than you,
taller.
There are purer than you,
purer.
There are lovelier than you,
lovelier.
But you are the queen.

When you go through the streets
No one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
At the carpet of red gold
That you tread as you pass,
The nonexistent carpet.

And when you appear
All the rivers sound
In my body, bells
Shake the sky,
And a hymn fills the world.

Only you and I,
Only you and I, my love,
Listen to me.

The Happiness Project

I missed the boat on New Year's Resolutions this year. Normally, it's quite a production: I sit down and spend several hours of navel-gazing, trying to figure out what I learned over the past year and what I would like to change for the upcoming year. This year, I spent the holiday season traveling, and never had the opportunity for my annual journal entry.

Fast-forward two months, and I found myself at my local bookstore, searching for The Happiness Project. I had heard about the book courtesy of a few legal blogs: it's authored by a former lawyer, who left her law firm to become a writer. It was a little embarrassing to find myself in the Self-Help section, so I bought the book to read from the luxury of my couch.

And, in a way, it made me think of the 2011 resolutions that never happened. It might seem indulgent -- who spends a year devoted to the pursuit of happiness? -- but the author's journey made me think about my own, and what I can change to make myself, well, happier. It's also an amalgam of research studies; although, like Gladwell in Blink, she cherry-picks research studies that support her hypotheses.

One of the parts that resonated most, though, was when offered the following anecdote:

"Because work is so crucial to happiness, another person's happiness project might well focus on choosing the right work. I, however, had already been through a major happiness quest career shift. I'd started out in law, and I'd had a great experience. But when my clerkship with Justice O'Connor drew to a close, I couldn't figure out what job I wanted next.

During this time, I visited the apartment of a friend who was in graduate school studying education, and I noticed several thick textbooks lying around her living room.

"Is this what they make you read for your program?" I asked, idly flipping through the dense, dull pages.

"Yes," she said, "but that's what I read in my spare time, anyhow."

For some reason, that casual answer shocked me to attention. What did I do in my spare time? I asked myself. As much as I liked clerking, I never spent one second more on legal subjects than I had to."

She later continues:

"My ambition, however, was also a factor in leaving the law. I'd become convinced that passion was a critical factor in professional success. People who love their work bring an intensity and enthusiasm that's impossible to match through sheer diligence. I could see that in my co-clerks at the Supreme Court: they read law journals for fun, they talked about cases during their lunch hours, they felt energized by their efforts. I didn't.

Enthusiasm is more important to master than innate ability, it turns out, because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice. Therefore, career experts argue, you're better off pursuing a profession that come easily and that you love, because that's where you'll be more eager to practice and thereby earn a competitive advantage."

It makes sense -- which then leads to the next question: How do you discover your passion?

Perspectives

Former editor-in-chief Tim Griffin, on publishing Artforum: "I want to go to art history and make it look contemporary and go to contemporary work and make it look historical."

See also, Calvino: "... for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new."

Direction (or, Directionless)

This is cheating a little: I haven't re-read Lewis Carroll in a while. However, this snippet seemed appropriate, given the general questions about life direction that have been percolating through my head:

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.

"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire Cat.

"I don't know," Alice answered.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't really matter."

For Diego (and his Mom!)

With the birth of Akash, in his sudden, perfect presence, Ruma felt awe for the first time in her life. He still had the power to stagger her at times -- simply the fact that he was breathing, that all his organs were in their proper places, that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small, sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood, her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born. Only the words her mother used were more literal, enriching the tired phrase with meaning: "He is made from your meat and bone." It had caused Ruma to acknowledge the supernatural in everyday life.

Looking at Marriage

In the middle of a reading bender. I just got back from Brazil, and with the jet lag, I've had many late nights poring over old books and reading new ones. The latest was Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert's "sequel" to Eat, Pray, Love. It's a little haphazard -- skipping from point to point without a very strong narrative -- but it's basically an exploration of the institution of marriage: its origins, its evolution, its pitfalls.

I thought one of more interesting points was her synopsis of a Rutgers University report entitled "Alone Together: How Marriage is Changing in America." Part of the report examines "divorce proneness": how likely a couple is to fail based on certain demographic factors. Unsurprisingly, Gilbert notes that, as per the report: "[t]he age of a couple at the time of their marriage seems to be the most significant consideration. The younger you are when you get married, the more likely you are to divorce later."

In addition, she points out seven additional factors based on her understanding of the report (*this is directly quoted from her):

1. Education. The better-educated you are, statistically speaking, the better off your marriage will be. The better-educated a woman is, in particular, the happier her marriage will be.

2. Children. The statistics show that couples with young children at home report "more disenchantment" within their marriage than couples with grown children, or couples who have no children at all.

3. Cohabitation: It appears that people who live together before marriage have a slightly higher divorce rate than those who wait until marriage to cohabit.

4. Heterogamy: The less similar you and your partner are in terms of race, age, religion, ethnicity, cultural background, and career, the more likely you are to someday divorce. Opposites do attract, but they don't always endure. Sociologists suspect that this trend will diminsh as society's prejudices break down over time, but for now?

5. Social Integration: The more tightly wove a couple is within a community of friends and family, the stronger their marriage will be.

6. Religiousness: The more religious a couple is, the more likely they are to stay married, although faith offers only a slight edge.

7. Gender Fairness: Marriages based on a traditional, restrictive sense about a woman's place in the home tend to be less strong and less happy than marriages where the man and the woman regard each other as equals, and where the husband participates in more traditionally female and thankless household chores.

A few thoughts on this:

• I don't think a lot of it is surprising. For instance, getting married later in life means that you're more in tune with yourself, your needs, your desires. On the other hand, as some of my family members have pointed out: the younger you are, the more adaptable you are, able to grow together.
• Once again, people: correlation does not signify causation. I don't think these factors are set in stone, and who knows the predictive success? (I tried finding the study online and failed, so I also can't examine it more thoroughly. For example, what was the non-response rate?) Also, I'm a little skeptical of the author's ability to parse through the report, but that just comes from my belief that statistics can often be easily manipulated. (Numbers might not lie, but how one interprets the numbers can often be a game.)
• What about the other intangibles, like life goals? If two partners are thoroughly incompatible in terms of what they're seeking in life, what is the predictive success of the marriage?
• I'm a little unclear what this measured: Happiness? Tendency to divorce? What of the couples unhappily married?

So who knows, but there you have it. An interpretation of marital success based on Elizabeth Gilbert's understanding of a Rutgers report.

Child Rearing and Choice

There seems to be a lot of buzz surrounding Amy Chau's new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom. Why the attention? A snippet was published in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend, outlining Chau's philosophy on child-rearing. Without going into the merits of her philosophy, I think Chau's piece illustrates the point that Iyengar made in The Art of Choosing about cultural norms and choice. For instance, Chau explains:

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children... Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences... Don't get me wrong: It's not that Chinese parents don't care about their children. Just the opposite. They would give up anything for their children. It's just an entirely different parenting model.

Clearly, Chau's beliefs stem from growing up as the daughter of Asian parents, who (as described in Iyengar's framework) likely subscribed to a collectivist belief system, in which:

The assumption is that your parents, and elders in general, will show you the right way to live your life so that you will be protected from making a costly mistake. There are "right" choices and "wrong" ones, and by following your elders, you will learn to choose correctly, even relinquishing choice when appropriate.

What I'm more curious about, though, is what (twenty years from now) Chau's children will think of their mother's methods. I think it's an interesting area of research: what is the effect on children of immigrant parents (who identify with collectivist cultures) but are raised in an individualist society?

A quick Google search led to a Q&A with Iyengar, in which she tangentially addresses that question:

Q: Can these two narratives about different ways to live one’s life run in parallel? Or is conflict inevitable?

A: No, they run up against each other, and you have to find some form of reconciliation. That’s why the narrative feeling becomes so salient to a bicultural person, because this conflict must be resolved. Some choose one or the other narrative, and some choose different narratives for different domains, and some create a new narrative for themselves. There is no one optimal path here. You have to judge if there’s a fit between the person’s narrative and the choices they ultimately make -- if there’s a fit, it’ll help them accomplish their goals. So the only way you can judge this narrative is through its functionality.

I could keep going on Iyengar (she makes decisions based on a ''committee of experts'' of coworkers, friends, etc.!), but I suspect my admiration is a little embarrassingly girl-crushy as it is.