(MARRIAGE) OR (CAREER?) or (MARRIAGE AND CAREER?)

       

      The pursuit of marriage and career is strewn with complicated webs of predicaments at interminable stages sometimes jarring even the most stable relationships.  Old values come in to stand against newly reached marital agreements to follow non-conventional paths such as the wife pursuing a career.  Before any decision is reached, the wife is engulfed in a torrent of sacrifices in her search for that veritable heaven called self-fulfillment.  Oftentimes, it puts the wife into a vexatious position of surmounting formidable cliffs to get the husband's acquiescence.  The first cliff is male machismo, the entrenched and treacherous male pride producing great agility and sure-footed determination on the part of the wife in the art of persuasion.  There are jagged rocks of dissent and protruding precipices of unwillingness on the husband's part.  Only self-willed women are apt to conquer these obstacles.

      The second barrier is finding the substitute for mother's arm in the care of the children.  Surely, the unique motherly love and caring are not subtitutable.  But the structure of Philippine society has made this love sharing service available through the domestic help and institutionalized "yaya".  The crucial decision here if the trust reposed on this cradle rocker upon whom is delegated the task of "whoever rocks the cradle rocks the world". 

     What makes a woman brave a cliffhanger position is perhaps traced to various factors such as the ultimate desire to become a seed of life, to contribute to real existence, to breathe in the atmosphere of two worlds:  the fulfilling world of marriage and the intriguing world of career.  Education has opened up new vistas for a woman to grasp beyond her arms - gaining entry into professional fields previously reserved for men.  Multi-media have shown that working can free her from the life-long dependency on the husband particularly for the for the pursuit of the simple pleasures and vanities subliminally infused or bombarded into the subconscious of women fro head-to-foot miracles for eternal youth and beauty by attractive advertisements.  Books and modern literature have shown her that she can widen her own world by meeting friends and wolves she could not have met by staying within the four walls of her home.  The friends are solace in time of emotional difficulties; the wolves are specimens for developing her immunity for crookedness that abounds in this world; enriching herself with experience that could turn her vulnerabilities into strength and make her interesting not only to her husband and children but to other people she comes in contact with. 

      Old as well as emerging theories on motivations for life should enable you to know that life's satisfaction comes in stages and the opportunity to be in these two worlds afford you that chance to satisfy your social needs of belonging, security, recognition, advancement, adventure, and seld-actualization.

       For it is part of being human that one aspires for higher goals in life as Vannevar Bush (1962) aptly says:

"Man's primary motivations of self-preservation, the urge to perpetuate his genetic constitution, the desire to accumulate or to conquer, these are the beginnings only of a truly civilized existence.  Beyond these, there is a sublimated deep yearning to play an effective part in the great experiment on which mankind is embarked, to be a real factor in the fabric of civilized life...only when the goal is thus broad, even though it be but dimly perceived, is there true satisfaction in living."