I could've been somebody. . .

I read Sandra Cisneros' novel House on Mango Street for my grad class last week. The book is a collection of connected short stories about a young Hispanic-American girl growing up in her neighborhood. Several quotes stood out to me about the book.

1. “I could’ve been somebody, you know? my mother says and sighs.”

I think this is the great fear for everyone in life – to wake up and realize what one could have been and see unrealized potential. I know I fear this on almost a daily basis. However, this mother doesn’t see that she is somebody. She is a wildly successful mother (it seems). She is likely someone who loves her family passionately. She has so much more than many people in life and has accomplished a great deal through her children. This was an important reminder to me, that perhaps what I accomplish with my family is so much more important than fulfilling professional potential.

2. “They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. . . . This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.”

“I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it. For the time being, Mama says. Temporary, says Papa. But I know how those things go.”

To me, this is a great picture of real life. On one side, you have the dream. This is what you hope for, this is what you’ve been told is within your reach as part of the American Dream. On the other side is reality. There is a disappointment when reality doesn’t match the dream. But the author knows “how those things go.” It’s life.

Also, this "Promised Land" approach to life is one of the most dangerous approaches to happiness that attacks the daily lives of so many individuals. It’s the “I’ll be happy when. . .” mindset, or the “If I can just get through this. . .” approach. The bottom line that people need to figure out (and that I need to remind myself of often) is that happiness is more of a choice and less of a product of circumstances. I won’t be happier when my graduate degree is complete. Things won’t calm down once I get through this grading period. If I’m not able to be content in all circumstances, I probably won’t be able to be content in any.

Also, these “promised land” dreams are what leads to a great deal of disappointment in life. It’s so easy to build up in our heads a perfect picture of what something will be like – first job, marriage, kids. And it’s rarely if ever how you picture it. Even the realities of the politics involved in being an educator are something that weren’t part of the grand picture I had in my head when dreaming of being a teacher. When expectations don’t meet reality, it’s easy to get down. (I know this sounds like a contradiction to my comments about dreaming big in an earlier post. Perhaps it is. But I'm okay with that)

A few other quotes that caught my eye, but that I'll let speak for themselves:

- “People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don’t look down at all except to be content to live on hills.”

- “All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes.”

- “Until then I am a red balloon, a balloon tied to an anchor.”