Taking the Time We Need
Last summer, Brigid Schulte wrote a piece for The Guardian called A woman's greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself. In the piece—which resonated with many, many women—Schulte laments that, for many of us, the greatest obstacle to deep thinking and deep creativity is our inability to find long stretches of time alone. It is an obstacle, as Schulte points out, that creative men don’t often face. She writes,
“I think of an interview Patti Scialfa gave on how difficult it was for her to write the music for her solo album because her kids kept interrupting her and demanding her time in a way that they never would of their father, Bruce Springsteen. And it strikes me: it’s not that women haven’t had the talent to make their mark in the world of ideas and art. They’ve never had the time.”
I thought that this essay was poignant, not just for artists, but for healthcare professionals, as well—all women, really, who engage in deep thinking and need the time and space to do it.
Our lives are full. We are caring for children, for sick parents, for the home. We are scheduling dental appointments for each member of the family when we might be writing novels. We are taking care to put birthday cards in the mail and doing the dishes and folding laundry when we might instead be inching toward some great innovation or invention. Schulte notes that women often feel that they need to complete the tasks of the day before they can devote time to creativity or deep thinking:
“They feel they have to earn it. And the only way to do that is to get to the end of a To-Do list that never ends: the chores of the day, as Melinda Gates writes in her new book, killing the dreams of a lifetime.”
That is not to say that there is not value and beauty in caring for our families and for our homes. But what might our creative and intellectual lives look like if we demanded household equity from male partners, if we were not carrying such an exhausting mental load? What might it look like if women recognized the worth of their stories and ideas and took the time to cultivate them? Like Shulte, I would love to see what would happen next—for artists and scientists alike.