Better Off Dead

In Which I Read That IVF/Eugenics Piece in the NYTimes

File: Gonzalo Carrasco - Job on the Dunghill - Google Art Project.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

In the midst of running around yesterday, I finished the book I was listening to. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything intellectual or existential. It was a long discourse on all the things that happen to you when you go through that once mysterious time in life where you cease being “in the way of women,” as the Bible says somewhere or other. This is quite an alarming expression, for it sounds like maybe, at that critical moment, you are no longer yourself. And it does certainly feel like that. But also, not at all. What do the youngsters say? It’s complicated.

Anyway, I like to read books and consume other kinds of content on this subject because of where I am in life, but I had two big problems with this excellent tome that will, if you are a woman of a certain age, definitely make you feel seen and heard—the book that is, not my problems. The first problem is the one that arises whenever you read something on a niche topic that is supposed to change your life. By the time you’ve got to the end and imbibed the point of the thing, you realize that this one particular circumstance is actually not all there is to your lived experience.

If you were, for example, able to eat the perfect anti-inflammatory diet, take the perfect amount of exercise, and do the perfect amount of mindfulness exercises to quiet your gnawing anxiety, there would still come a point when you would die. It’s bound to happen someday, even if you do “crush” whatever current difficulty you are facing in life. This leads me to pause in my kitchen and think, you know what, I’m going to take the true Anglican via media. I’m going to eat bread, but I’m going to pay the enormous tariff penalty exacted on those buying flour from France. I’m going to drink wine, but I’ll make sure it doesn’t have red dye and toxins.

The second problem I had with the book, which is not going to be the main subject of this blog, but perhaps might feature in other ones, is that she kept talking about lowering stress as an essential part of managing “symptoms,” but never once mentioned, you know, God, not even a false one.