Happy Mothers Day
It is a bit strange that we set aside one day a year to honor Mom and motherhood because where I sit it is something we need to honor every hour of every day.
Motherhood is one of the most beautiful things about life.
The combination of unrelenting love and equally unrelenting demands is a potent mix.
It is the thing that makes us grow up and be what we are.
So let’s celebrate motherhood and the mothers in our life today, and every day.
Happy Mothers Day.
Comments (Archived):
Yup–couldn’t agree more.We are a product of the families we are raised in and in my world at least, my mom was the force that defined that.My post this morning: Mother’s Day http://arnoldwaldstein.com/…
A beautiful remembrance
I remember you once posted a photo of your mother, describing her as being in the twilight of her life. I’m sorry to (only) now read that she’s since passed way. My belated condolences to you and your family.
Thanks! Much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing such a beautiful tribute to her, Arnold.This “These little questions that are cropping up with no where to find the answer” reminds us of how mothers are our memory banks and stewards of family stories.Your mother was clearly a remarkable woman — both for her longevity and keeping you all on your toes with charm and laughter over those 97 years.
Thanks!And that is such a nice way to put it.I’ve blogged a fair bit on my mom, my dad, my grandfather and being brought up lower middle class in an immigrant family and how fortunate I am for this.
You’re talking, correctly, for family formation and the strength of a society more generally, the primacy of social and psychological capital over financial capital.We can build a house, car, computer, road, or factory quickly and routinely. In strong contrast, it takes 25 years of highly dedicated, competent, insightful, creative work to rear a good child.Financial capital is important but is the result of, and not an alternative to, good social and psychological capital.An illustration of the difference is the remark that the story of wealth in America is “rags to rags in three generations”.
I fully agree, and that makes two of us, and with the current low birth rate and PC culture generally negative on motherhood and pushing lots of activities other than, and that often conflict with, motherhood, you and I seem to have little company.As sad as is the neglect of motherhood, some solid good news is that in effect Darwin is strongly on the case so that in likely remarkably few more generations motherhood will be highly coveted, honored, respected, and strongly practiced again.My guess, which seems totally obvious, is that the next few generations will be one of the periods of fastest human genetic, and cultural, change in all of human history we know anything about: Or, it’s not nice to try to fool Mother Nature. PC will lose badly, and Mother Nature will win.The situation of the rebirth of strong emphasis on motherhood is a unique combination of both strong and simple: The future of civilization and the human gene pool depend both mostly and crucially on women good at motherhood. Men who work effectively to lead good families are nearly all the rest of what is important.Totally obviously, long term, and even not so long, attacking or even just disrespecting or not emphasizing motherhood is totally without hope and doomed to failure. Bluntly, the people who do emphasize motherhood will determine the future of motherhood.That is, in a profound sense, people who do not emphasize strong families get on average not much to say about the future of the culture, no seat at the table, no vote.There may be a simple rule learned by little girls as they play with dolls: Life choices that emphasize good motherhood are the top priorities. Choices that get in the way of good motherhood or just neglect to emphasize it are to be avoided.
Included in the blessing of course is Mother Earth. Or in Kabbalah – the Supernal Mother which is the Sefirah of “Understanding (Binah)” – the “Womb” of creation, impregnated by the Seed of Wisdom (Chochmah), giving birth to Consciousness (Daat). Happy Mothers Day.
CONTRIBUTORS:The original blog poster highlighted it. Everyday a mother fulfills her responsibility as a mother. No hallmark company can monetize off the everyday efforts of the mom.In 2015 we lost (Singular) our Mom to sepsis and always acknowledged her day was everyday. We have no regrets because we communicated at least every other day with her. We didn’t have any Daddy or Mommy issues. We actively showed love to our mom. Not just in spirit or when a day is established. How many really get along with their mothers? Putting aside some petty reason you don’t communicate with her regularly. Don’t have her in some home with strangers she feels more comfortable with than you.Get off your a$$’s and call your Mother and let her know how much you appreciate her no matter how much she disciplined you or some other meaningless reason you use not to communicate. It may be uncomfortable because it is out of your character but the conversation will be brief. Just do it.Captain Obvious!#UNEQUIVOCALLYUNAPOLOGETICALLYINDEPENDENT
Due to PC and more, a LOT of women, mothers or not, are actually not much interested in motherhood. Generally a huge fraction of modern women have a long list of really important goals and activities that conflict with motherhood and family.One such attitude is that “motherhood is a women giving up the best years of her life and her CAREER just to do low grade, menial scut work, spending all her time working at the intellectual level of children, just reproducing the next generation without any progress for society, to raise some MAN’S children.”.Another attitude is that being a wife and mother with a refrigerator, a clothes washer, a clothes dryer, a dish washer/dryer, a four burner, two oven electric stove, a microwave oven, a refrigerator, a freezer, a vacuum cleaner, clean hot and cold running water, a vacuum cleaner, permanent press clothes, whole house, filtered HVAC, their own car with HVAC, K-12 for the children, libraries, radio, TV, the Internet, a computer, a smartphone, all the useful items in the grocery and department stores, carryout fast food, Chinese food, Italian food, etc. is a terrible life and “a problem that has no name”.Instead, about the best way for a good life and forward for civilization is good motherhood in a strong family. In particular, a mother is the one primarily responsible for the development of her children — emotional, verbal, psychological, social, creative, artistic, empathetic, moral, ethical, religious, athletic, academic, mechanical, rational, quantitative, scientific, technical, romantic, entrepreneurial, etc. So, done well, there is lot to motherhood.All those labor saving devices are good to have but are not free and, instead, demand enough in productivity to pay for them, and that productivity needs a lot in good child development and motherhood.”The problem that has no name” does have a name, “boredom” from neglecting the child development to generate enough productivity to pay for the labor saving devices that permitted the boredom.
Here’s to all mothers who do harder and more roles than CEOs:* Chairman of the Board for their spouse/partner’s career;* CFO of household budgets;* Main Professor of Education from age 0 all the way through the life cycle of their kids;* Family psychologist;* Interior designer of the home;* Chef extraordinaire; etc.I think about mothers a lot within the context of Baby AI. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Yup, for the successful moms!
cheers!
A lifelong and full time job. Only the bravest need apply!!
> Only the bravest need apply!!So, THAT’S why the birth rate is so low we’re going extinct?Let’s see: Our ancestors, without smartphones or plastics, covered essentially all the earth, including nearly all the larger islands. They did it walking, mostly barefoot. They put up with injuries, infections, carnivorous predators, deserts, ice ages, bad water, hot sun, hunger, etc.And they were successful at motherhood. Since their birth rate was higher than ours, they were more successful at motherhood than we are. On average, they were ALL plenty brave, brave enough to be successful.Although we’re failing and not successful, we’re fully PC!!!!!
And interesting that it is celebrated at different times around the world. Every month of the year, there is a Mother’s Day somewhere.http://www.holidays.net/mot…
Gee, makes one start to guess that there are mothers “all around the world”. You suspect that there is something general, continuing, about motherhood????? I wonder if here in the US how long it will take for us to think of motherhood and families as important?Instead IIRC 40% of babies are born to single mothers; 1/3rd of marriages end in divorce; and the birth rate is so low we’re literally going extinct.I know; I know; I know; we have so many really important things to do and are so busy, busy, busy that we have no time for the less important things like motherhood and families.
My son just got his first full time gig in video production – working for eVine shopping network. He came over the other night, and was excitedly describing his first week – and during a story said something like “… and they’re the makers of the bath salts that I got….” He realized he just gave away his Mother’s Day present. He was so chagrined – “I only had one job – not to tell her…”I lost my mom 20 years ago to cancer – now it’s such a great joy to watch my kids celebrate their mom…
Yes. And a special Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful moms who take time, from their very busy lives, to join us here.My wife has me trained well doesn’t she.
I wish he meant it but beautiful and real life
He being my wonderful Ferdi T
So, one day a year, very much as we should, we celebrate Mother’s Day.But on average in our culture, our respect for motherhood and strong families is so low that the birth rate is so low we are going extinct, literally. The fraction of single mothers is too high; the birth rate is too low; the divorce rate is too high; the fraction of strong families is too low; the abortion rate is too high; the graduation rate is too low; and the rates of serious social and psychological problems are way too high. As a society, our social and psychological CAPITAL are way, way too darned LOW.Now, how about on all the other days of the year and also on Mother’s Day, we celebrate and promote MOTHERHOOD and strong families, e.g., enough to get the crime rate down, the graduation rates up, the divorce rate down, the marriage rate up, the number of single mothers down, the number of married mothers up, the abortion rate down, the number of strong families up, and the river of PC nonsense dried up and blown away.The PC nonsense is so destructive of the US it might have been some astoundingly manipulative, fiendish sabotage of all of US society by some brilliant Soviet enemy. With motherhood and strong families one of pillars of any successful culture and necessarily one of the most important, the one essential, part of life for women, to have some manipulative fiend just calmly talk women into rejecting motherhood as beneath them, as “a problem that has no name”, and pursue a life of some contrived, plastic wrapped, throw away PC goals instead is a more serious threat to our civilization than even the ice ages. The PC stuff needs to be piled on the toxic scrap heap of cultural history; maybe it would be illuminating when ignited.
Well, one thing is for sure. It is a job that requires lifelong learning. Well, at least that is what I am thinking now that my oldest is 23.Nice thoughts, Fred. Thank you.