Role models

I don't have a role model. I never have. Some women these days love Oprah and aspire to be like her. I don't. She's not bad, and she certainly gives a lot of herself and her money to the world, but I just can't look up to someone who puts herself on the cover of each of her magazines. That just really irks me. I had a therapist who liked to give me little tasks to do each week (her effort at trying to institute a little behavioral therapy, but these exercises quickly subsided when she realized that I was a bad student and didn't like to do what I was told to do), and one of her tasks was research strong, healthy women who could perhaps be good role models for me. I did a little reading on Eleanor Roosevelt and for a while wanted my next cat to be named Eleanor, but never really latched on to her as a personal role model. Maybe it's because she had such a difficult time being a mother (her kids seem to have had a pretty cold childhood by way of motherly love), and one of the things that I'd like to be is a warm, giving, and caring person, someone emotionally sound and secure. If I were a mother I'd want to be a good one. So while I admire Eleanor and feel that she could be a very strong role model for women, she's not for me.

After my trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with my mom and sister last weekend, I've been doing some reading on the Gardner Museum theft, and a little reading up on Mrs. Gardner herself, and I wonder if she could be my role model. I don't really know enough about her, but from what I've learned so far it seems that she was a very strong, smart, classy lady who wanted to make available to the world the beauty and culture of art. This I can admire, and this I can aspire to. She didn't go around giving alms to the poor, or adopting needy children, or campaigning on the political circuit like some suffragette women, but she did throw herself fully into what she believed in. She had passion. She had determination. She had a mind of her own and she used it. These are qualities that I think I want for myself. Yes, I am aware that she was able to throw herself into her art and music and culture and society because she had the money and birth to do so, but that doesn't mean that I can't throw myself into those things that I enjoy, too. I just have to channel my self-confidence in order to give my life over to my passions (or at least my pleasures). Sometimes I feel chained inside myself... I don't drink, don't smoke, don't have any dangerous habits, don't drive fast, don't run red lights, don't live recklessly, don't do drugs, don't drink tea, don't drink coffee, don't speak my mind, don't make a burden of myself, don't leave the house dirty or unshowered, don't have strong opinions, don't cut people in lines... just about the only thing I do do that maybe I shouldn't do is eat a lot of sugary foods, like chocolate and cookies and jellybeans and ice cream. This is why I am looking for a vice. I need a release. Isabella Stewart Gardner's release was art and I like that about her. She could express herself through this passion for collecting and this passion for beauty and creativity and could also give something of herself to the world via her museum. Can I do all of that just by starting to drink iced coffee?