The one where I wonder what we did before Oprah

Some people do their jobs.  Some people do their jobs well.  Some people wouldn’t know how to do their job if it slapped them upside the head.  Oprah knows how to do her job and I think she does it well.  People open up and tell Oprah anything.  People read any book Oprah deems worthy of her book club.  Today, Oprah’s show featured overworked moms.  To highlight the point that women, especially mothers, stumble through their days in a fog, going from one activity to another, multi-tasking non-stop for 20 hours a day, Oprah interviewed a lady who forgot her 2 year old child in the car.  Tragically, the child died and of course, her mother still lives in devastation.  Over and over, story after story on today’s show revealed how many mothers in America find themselves endangering their children’s lives each day because they aren’t present.  So many mothers admitted, openly and honestly, that they fail to pay attention to their actions, the tasks they attempt to complete each day and in effect their children.  One mother admitted to killing her child’s kitten in the dryer.  She found herself so busy and in so much of a hurry that she didn’t even realize she had loaded the kitten in the dryer with their newly cleaned linens.

And ironically channel 12 is broadcasting, at this very moment, how a young girl named Cameron, here in San Antonio, died today in an overheated car.  What morbid irony!

I certainly refrain from judging these poor mothers.  I often find myself overwhelmed, trying to do too many things each day, and in the same situation as each of the women featured on Oprah except I care for dogs instead of small humans.  I fail to understand how all the mothers in America do it.  My dogs demand enough attention from me.  Children certainly require even more work.

Americans must slow down.  Our health declines each year.  Our level of satisfaction with life decreases each month.  Our blood pressure increases daily.   Does it really take a Cancerous diagnosis or killing a child to make people wake up?  Changing our ways proves difficult and uncomfortable, I know.  Learning to deal with my own guilt when I find myself tossing a football in the backyard at night with John instead of working in my office upstairs proves challenging but I’m doing it.  Everywhere I look, the world shouts out slow down.  But everyone I talk to says “I know, I know, but …” when I point out they should slow down themselves.  How did we create a society that knows better and yet still engages in dangerous behavior.  I wonder, what would happen if we all went back to working only 40 hours a week?  Truly, what societal ramifications could we expect to deal with?  I wonder if someone has written a book on this?

This entry was posted on Wed, Oct 01 2008 at 16:18 and is filed under Vanessa's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.