When I was young, I once drove to Wyoming in a snow storm with a boyfriend on a whim. We got caught in the mountain overpasses by a whiteout, and we were getting scared for our safety because my headlights were aimed oddly and I had no fog lights in my ancient Toyota. We were eventually led out of the passes by some truckers, and continued on our way. Even though we had been frightened, the entire experience was exactly that, an Experience. It was one of those moments of youth that you look back on a thrill over.

The true tragedy in life isn’t that the world gets mundane and loses it’s thrill as we age. There are as many fantastic and terrifying experiences that come with thirty as there were with 19. In fact, the stakes are higher now than they have ever been, I should be over the rooftops with thrill. I am daily surrounded by everything I ever dreamed of when I was young.

No, the real tragedy is that we never realize the thrill, until years have passed. When we are young, we long for our adulthood and minimize our youth. As adults, we long for our youth and stress over our adulthood.

The real tragedy is never being thrilled with where you are.

Oh, there are some moments of perfect realization, a few of those experiences that break through life like the sun breaks through the clouds. Radiating their heat, their thrill, into our very souls, and screaming “This. This is what I live for.”

Those moments are rare. They can be a trip to Wyoming, or the first time your child really laughs at something you do, or when your partner looks at you in just the right way. The first time you do what you trained so long to do, or the first promotion, the first word, the first step.

Why can’t they be found in the laundry? Or the dishes? Or the TPS reports? Those are the places where we build the foundation for those moments. No one lives to starve, or go broke, or wear filthy clothes all the time. You need the mundane in order to create stage for your life to play across. Without the sweat and repetition of life, there is nowhere for the magic to happen.

We should be thrilled to have the mundane. We should look around our lives, and we should say, I am thrilled to be here, knee deep in dirty dishes, surrounded by cleaning products, buried in paperwork, stuck in traffic.

Why do we wait for the tiny moments, the rare moments, the movie moments, to thrill?

moar funny pictures

219 years.
43 Presidents.
43 White Men.

In the 1790 census, performed one year after George Washington was inaugurated, there were approximately 1,598,944 free white men, 1,541,263 free white women, 59,150 free persons of other races, and 694,280 slaves in the United States.

The free white women were nearly equal in number to the free white men at the start of our nation (this did not account for women of other races, of course, neither did the numbers for the men). President George Washington was not representative of the sex and race of the majority of the population. That was the way things were back then, but they changed.

In 1890, there were approximately 32,067,880 men and 30,554,370 women in the United States. There were approximately 7,038,360 non-white persons. There was a total population of 62,622,250 persons. White men totaled less than half the population of the United States. President Benjamin Harrison was not representative of the sex and race of a majority of the population. That was the way things were back then, but they changed.

In 2000, there were 143,368,343 women and 138,053,563 men in the United States. 75.1 percent of those were white, 24.9 percent were another race. The women outnumbered the men. President George W. Bush was not representative of the gender and race of the majority of the population. That was the way things were back then, but they changed?

Not in 2004…

Oh, but gender discrimination, it’s all but gone. Things have changed.

219 years.
43 Presidents.
43 White Men.

Where exactly is the change?

If you want to see the numbers, get a look at how much lower our wages are, how the families we support are more likely to be impoverished, and how at all age groups we are more likely to live in poverty than men are, go here, and choose the “We the Americans” report on women.

Not all the news is bad. We are getting more educated, we are getting more involved in the workforce and in politics, but not enough has changed. Run the numbers for yourself. The census info goes back all the way to 1790, and it makes for a very interesting read.

ADDITION: Posted after some positive news on women in politics, and a comment as to the nigh-purely negative view of my post, was discovered… (by me, I realize the editorial was out for a bit before I read it. Sorry Daddy, I don’t always read it right away!.)

Colorado is a great place for women to be! Why? Well we outnumber the men in the House of Representatives, 21 to 19. Yay! A female majority! Of course, women politicos still only make up a third of the legislators in the state, but there is a majority in the house.

Why does this matter? Because while there have not been any Boys V.S. Girls votes in the legislature, it is important to realize that voting on bills is only a small part of the process. Determining what bills get up for vote is the big part, and having a number of women around to insure a modicum of women’s issues get on the floor is an important thing!

The editorial is much more eloquent than me. Link above and check it out!