Remembering what really matters

Personal life or career… it’s the age-old question, isn’t it? Especially for women. After all, it’s always been accepted that men can – and, as a matter of fact, should – have them both. For women it’s always been a little different. While a woman has definitely come a long way since the dark ages when she couldn’t speak her mind, vote, or even hope for any sort of job, the choice to blaze a path down the career line or stay at home with the family is one that will eventually have to be made.

Many women may argue and say they can have it all, but is that really possible? Can you really devote yourself completely to getting ahead in your career and still manage to devote yourself completely to a husband, and/or children? It sounds too good to be true and, in many cases, it is. Sure women can still have a family and a job but she really can’t go the distance with either unless she chooses one. While she may advance in leaps and bounds in her career that will obviously take time and effort away from her children. On the other hand, if being with the husband and kids is the priority then the job may pay the bills but she will definitely not have the time required for that big promotion or that executive office.

Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit sexist here, and I’ll admit that men may suffer the same choice as well. While a man may not be as condemned as a woman for choosing career over family he misses out as much as she does when he chooses the overseas conference call over catching his baby’s first steps. He misses as much as she does if he’s out of town on business during his child’s recital. I guess Stanley Tucci’s character Nigel had it right in The Devil Wears Prada – when one’s booming the other usually suffers. I believe his words were "Let me know when your personal life goes down in flames. Then it’ll be time for a promotion!"

As a matter of fact, it was this movie, along with the recent Click, that sent me down this path of rumination. It seems that people really can’t have it all, and in the end something is going to have to take precedence. That made me start thinking of my own life and of the choices I might make when placed in similar situations.

When I was younger (and, let’s face it, more naïve) I automatically used to say that I would always choose my career. I kept telling myself that I had to look out for myself and whatever career I wanted to pursue I would have to sacrifice everything else to succeed. But then, over the years, my opinion has changed, and not just a little, but a lot. Even before The Devil Wears Prada and Click came along, I realized that success is pretty empty when you don’t have someone to share it with, be it family, a loved one or friends.

After all, how can you really enjoy getting everything you want if you come home to an empty house and have no one to talk to? This is something I would never want for my life, not for all the fame, money and success in the world. It was like that moment when Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly tells Andy (played by Anne Hathaway) that "Everyone wants this" – referring to her own life wherein, yes, she may have attained prestige, power and fame, but is suffering through a second divorce, with children she barely sees, and a good job she’s actually getting too old for and is clinging to by her fingertips, to the point of selling out her oldest friends. I don’t need a crystal ball or a magic remote control to tell me that her story ends up with her old and alone.

And I thought to myself, that’s not what I want. I mean, don’t get me wrong, sure I’d love to have a powerful and prestigious career but just not at the expense of everything else in my life. I’d like to believe I can find the happy medium and be well-rounded. It’s a dream come true to be able to do something you love and share it with your loved ones as well. I wouldn’t want to be like Miranda Priestly who constantly gives everything up to achieve success. And I wouldn’t like to be like Adam Sandler’s character in Click and realize at the end of my life that I didn’t give importance to what really mattered.

It’s going to sound like a cliché, but I don’t care, I’ll say it anyway: money and power only go so far in life and they can never guarantee you happiness. Love, friendship, family… while these words may sound like a traditional Hallmark card greeting, I believe they are the real ingredients for happiness and fulfillment. I mean, naturally we all have to make money and we all want to succeed and make something out of our lives and that’s all well and good, but we should never take for granted the people who make those lives worth living.