My grandmother's home was always a restful, nourishing haven, the kind of place you step into and sigh and all your worries melt away because Grandma is there and she's taken care to have your favorite treats and will always listen. Part of the effect was that it was spotlessly clean and designed with her artistic eye for interior decorating. I never realized how much hard work and skill went into that effortless-feeling space until I made a home for my own family.
When I think about working to see the effort (of others) that underlies a convenience for me, my mind goes to the essays in "Movement Matters" by Katy Bowman. Her writing has really opened my eyes to drilling down on this. As a biomechanist, she often focuses on the ways that we in our sedentary U.S. culture choose to outsource *physical movement* to others-- and then become so dependent on that outsourcing that the very way we move our bodies becomes optional; or artificial; or insufficient to wellness and physical function. Particularly, the movements it takes to sustain our accustomed way of living start to seem magical to those of us who never perform them.
She has challenged me to consider: what thousands of movements have we forfeited or pushed off to others, and what ignorance have we tolerated about where that real labor occurs? Food, shelter, electronics, entertainment, transportation, caregiving-- what is happening in our "movement ecology" that enables ease, that exploits creation and wilderness, that erases the dignity of human effort when it is locked into narrow, repetitive, industrialized patterns? She gives the examples of vehicle key remotes and tea bags. We unconsciously trade the extra effort involved-- walking around the car to open the door, turning our wrist to unlock; scooping loose tea and washing the infuser-- for an increase in garbage (the tea bag wrapper in a landfill, the tiny staple into the compost and into the soil) and extraction (mining materials for a computer-chip fob, the menial labor of those halfway around the globe who subsist within that extractive cycle).
My favorite thing about the show Better Call Saul is how it honors persistence. Not just in Jimmy's entrepreneurship, but especially in how several of the characters size up tasks and get down to them even when it's clear that they require a lot of unglamorous drudgery. Even the "get rich quick" schemes require dutifulness. Working smarter is good, but sometimes the smartest way is still through the middle. In Better Call Saul the smart people recognize those times for what they are and don't dither.
Low-spoiler examples:
- Mike taking his car apart, piece by piece, to find a tracking device.
- Mike sitting up all night in his car on a stakeout.
- Jimmy meticulously cutting and pasting to forge documents.
- Jimmy making multiple trips to carry hundreds of boxes into his office.
- The German engineer doing a Fermi estimate.
Parenting has a lot of those moments. Sometimes all the layers of clothes get dirty three times in a row and you just have to change them again, like taking a car apart. Sometimes you've tried every trick to get the baby to sleep and you just have to try them all again, on your nighttime stakeout. Sometimes you only have one hand free and you have to make five trips for all the things. It's okay. You can do it. Mike could do it.
I can do it. I think back to labor. 25 hours of active labor, each of those hundreds of contractions (as painful as amputating a digit, according to one scale) a tiny step of progress toward their natural and beautiful completion. I did the work, it got done, it was worth it. Patience. I'm still basking in my recent reminder of its power. It can handle so much, when applied to the right situation.
For me, it has always been cooking. My late mother in law used to watch me cook a holiday meal while juggling a conversation with her and dealing with a toddler. She always said "you cook so easy!" In reality, I had planned the menu, made sure we had ingredients, found and washed the dishes we would need, prepared the linens, etc. way before they arrived. I was also coasting on generations of women who were skilled cooks. I learned to cook by cooking with my mother and with my grandmothers, and by years of working difficult, dirty restaurant jobs.
> "Where have you been the one to put in the work that made something appear effortless?"
In an online community I've belonged to since 2007!
Fundamentally, people want to be understood... and yet, when there are tensions and taking-sides in debates-- we put on masks, and engage in subterfuge on multiple levels!
Sometimes, even people good at catching communications subtlety benefit greatly from reading an exchange 3 or 4 times to understand the relational dynamics of the situation you're speaking in to! Once, I re-read one of the most explosive conflicts I'd seen in that forum a year or more after it happened, and went, "OH, I think THAT is what she (the long-time member who was being provoked / sorta piled-on.) was trying to say!" (and the "THAT" was something far more charitable than I'd thought at the time!)
I did some of my reconciliation dialogues over forum private messages rather than in public - and never regretted it once! Sometimes the most AMAZING shifts in relational alignments (from "being natural adversaries" to each-other to being strongly loyal to each-other, while having differing views) were when I even took the conversation OFF the forum by asking someone if they could email me to talk - I think it enabled us to reach further into other areas of our lives (then the topic-at-hand of forum discussion of the moment) in our dialogue.
Some of our group's peacemaking happened as a result of the structure of the forums (as a result of someone else's efforts!) They were broken up into different topics! So if you were at-loggerheads with someone on the Philosophy & Religion debate subforum, you could still engage with delightfully-ridiculous and INANE word games in the Games subforum, or say something encouraging as you hear about what's going on for them as a parent in the "General Discussion" subforum where people talk about about how things are going in our separate lives! I found it helped keep me a lot more mellow & sympathetic to my fellow forum-members if I didn't -only- engage in discussions that were controversies I felt passionate about.
A lot of “soft skills” work is considered to be effortless. At least when it's done by a woman. Patriarchy performs it's own magic trick - framing our view so this work is "natural" for "social" women while it's prized as a leadership trait in men. Managing a collaborative effort includes facilitating meetings, drawing out ideas, surfacing disagreements. It’s the work that makes other work possible (or better). It should *always* be recognized as such!
It's similar to another vestige of the patriarchy: dad gets praised for dressing his kiddo adorably while the mechanics & mental load of ensuring the kids' clothes fit & match generally falls on mom.
My grandmother's home was always a restful, nourishing haven, the kind of place you step into and sigh and all your worries melt away because Grandma is there and she's taken care to have your favorite treats and will always listen. Part of the effect was that it was spotlessly clean and designed with her artistic eye for interior decorating. I never realized how much hard work and skill went into that effortless-feeling space until I made a home for my own family.
When I think about working to see the effort (of others) that underlies a convenience for me, my mind goes to the essays in "Movement Matters" by Katy Bowman. Her writing has really opened my eyes to drilling down on this. As a biomechanist, she often focuses on the ways that we in our sedentary U.S. culture choose to outsource *physical movement* to others-- and then become so dependent on that outsourcing that the very way we move our bodies becomes optional; or artificial; or insufficient to wellness and physical function. Particularly, the movements it takes to sustain our accustomed way of living start to seem magical to those of us who never perform them.
She has challenged me to consider: what thousands of movements have we forfeited or pushed off to others, and what ignorance have we tolerated about where that real labor occurs? Food, shelter, electronics, entertainment, transportation, caregiving-- what is happening in our "movement ecology" that enables ease, that exploits creation and wilderness, that erases the dignity of human effort when it is locked into narrow, repetitive, industrialized patterns? She gives the examples of vehicle key remotes and tea bags. We unconsciously trade the extra effort involved-- walking around the car to open the door, turning our wrist to unlock; scooping loose tea and washing the infuser-- for an increase in garbage (the tea bag wrapper in a landfill, the tiny staple into the compost and into the soil) and extraction (mining materials for a computer-chip fob, the menial labor of those halfway around the globe who subsist within that extractive cycle).
A few years ago I wrote down these musings:
My favorite thing about the show Better Call Saul is how it honors persistence. Not just in Jimmy's entrepreneurship, but especially in how several of the characters size up tasks and get down to them even when it's clear that they require a lot of unglamorous drudgery. Even the "get rich quick" schemes require dutifulness. Working smarter is good, but sometimes the smartest way is still through the middle. In Better Call Saul the smart people recognize those times for what they are and don't dither.
Low-spoiler examples:
- Mike taking his car apart, piece by piece, to find a tracking device.
- Mike sitting up all night in his car on a stakeout.
- Jimmy meticulously cutting and pasting to forge documents.
- Jimmy making multiple trips to carry hundreds of boxes into his office.
- The German engineer doing a Fermi estimate.
Parenting has a lot of those moments. Sometimes all the layers of clothes get dirty three times in a row and you just have to change them again, like taking a car apart. Sometimes you've tried every trick to get the baby to sleep and you just have to try them all again, on your nighttime stakeout. Sometimes you only have one hand free and you have to make five trips for all the things. It's okay. You can do it. Mike could do it.
I can do it. I think back to labor. 25 hours of active labor, each of those hundreds of contractions (as painful as amputating a digit, according to one scale) a tiny step of progress toward their natural and beautiful completion. I did the work, it got done, it was worth it. Patience. I'm still basking in my recent reminder of its power. It can handle so much, when applied to the right situation.
For me, it has always been cooking. My late mother in law used to watch me cook a holiday meal while juggling a conversation with her and dealing with a toddler. She always said "you cook so easy!" In reality, I had planned the menu, made sure we had ingredients, found and washed the dishes we would need, prepared the linens, etc. way before they arrived. I was also coasting on generations of women who were skilled cooks. I learned to cook by cooking with my mother and with my grandmothers, and by years of working difficult, dirty restaurant jobs.
> "Where have you been the one to put in the work that made something appear effortless?"
In an online community I've belonged to since 2007!
Fundamentally, people want to be understood... and yet, when there are tensions and taking-sides in debates-- we put on masks, and engage in subterfuge on multiple levels!
Sometimes, even people good at catching communications subtlety benefit greatly from reading an exchange 3 or 4 times to understand the relational dynamics of the situation you're speaking in to! Once, I re-read one of the most explosive conflicts I'd seen in that forum a year or more after it happened, and went, "OH, I think THAT is what she (the long-time member who was being provoked / sorta piled-on.) was trying to say!" (and the "THAT" was something far more charitable than I'd thought at the time!)
I did some of my reconciliation dialogues over forum private messages rather than in public - and never regretted it once! Sometimes the most AMAZING shifts in relational alignments (from "being natural adversaries" to each-other to being strongly loyal to each-other, while having differing views) were when I even took the conversation OFF the forum by asking someone if they could email me to talk - I think it enabled us to reach further into other areas of our lives (then the topic-at-hand of forum discussion of the moment) in our dialogue.
Some of our group's peacemaking happened as a result of the structure of the forums (as a result of someone else's efforts!) They were broken up into different topics! So if you were at-loggerheads with someone on the Philosophy & Religion debate subforum, you could still engage with delightfully-ridiculous and INANE word games in the Games subforum, or say something encouraging as you hear about what's going on for them as a parent in the "General Discussion" subforum where people talk about about how things are going in our separate lives! I found it helped keep me a lot more mellow & sympathetic to my fellow forum-members if I didn't -only- engage in discussions that were controversies I felt passionate about.
A lot of “soft skills” work is considered to be effortless. At least when it's done by a woman. Patriarchy performs it's own magic trick - framing our view so this work is "natural" for "social" women while it's prized as a leadership trait in men. Managing a collaborative effort includes facilitating meetings, drawing out ideas, surfacing disagreements. It’s the work that makes other work possible (or better). It should *always* be recognized as such!
It's similar to another vestige of the patriarchy: dad gets praised for dressing his kiddo adorably while the mechanics & mental load of ensuring the kids' clothes fit & match generally falls on mom.