Juggling our daily lives realisticall Marion Balla
Vietnamese(VPS) Vietnamese(VSCII)

 This is about him having been given other messages. The message in our society tells him that if things don’t work out, go and find somebody else to help you. Our job, as women, is very much to remember that the messages we get are incorrect. Messages that men get are incorrect. Do not in any way, blame each other for what is happening. What happens in society is in term of roles. You are this, and you are this. Therefore, we are very different people. It’s true except we do not own the responsibility to make the life of either one works. We have to do it together. That is the big challenge today. How can men and women live equally when many of us have been socializing, and continue to be socialized not to be equal?  In consequence, women, in particular, feel guilty.

 Some of you are sitting here today feel guilty about being at this conference. Some of you are worried about home. Some of you don’t even want to telephone home. If you do, you will hear sad voices saying ‘Why did you have to go away? Things are not good here. Please come home soon.’ Still, some of you will think ‘Oh my God! I’m missed!’ Some of you will say ‘Oh no, I want them to be happy while I was away.’ If you are the servant in your house, people will not be happy when you were away. There will be nobody there to serve as well as you do.  They will be sad.

 What you want to say to them is ‘I know you are actually fine without me.  In fact, you are probably doing more for yourself this weekend than normal. When I come home, I’m not going to take back any of the work that you’ve been able to do.’ Have you noticed that whenever women go away, the family does more work: the husband works harder, the children work harder.  All of the sudden, the woman comes back home and they all say ‘Oh good, now we can relax.’ What you’d say after this conference is ‘No, things do not stop here.  Whatever you did while I was away, you will continue to do because now, I know you can do it.’

 Women have to learn to become a full human being. We need to know what we own or what is ours and to know what we do not own.  We do not own other people’s life.  We do not own anybody else’s life. We own our own life.  My children, both daughters, have said to me many times ‘Mother, why don’t you get a life? Then you wouldn’t watch ours so closely!’ That’s a good message.

 Many times, we don’t have a life for ourselves. Our own goals, our own way of going out into the world, are things we all have to juggle. We get very focussed on other people and what they need, what they like, how they would like to be..  We forget how we would like to be.  How many of you find that you do that often?  You put other people first and you’ll come if there is time. Many times, there is no time for you.

 Some of you stay up very late at night to have your time. You want the house to yourself and you want peace and quiet. However, what happens the next day? You are very tired.  One thing we have to teach people is that women have the right too some time for themselves, even when other people are awake. Too often, we wait until everyone is asleep to have our time. We could actually say instead: ‘I’m off duty. As at 9:30 p.m. each night, I’m off duty.  I’m not here. If you see me, smile.’  Do not ask for anything. You may ask what you are going to do, now that you have time for yourself. Now, this is very good modeling for male and female children. Children of this generation have to know that men and women have the right to take care of themselves. They have the right to have a life. They have the right when they are tired to sit down. Many of you complain a lot but you don’t sit down. You keep saying ‘I’m so tired, I don’t know how I will ever get this done. I don’t know if I’ll get through today.’  You go on and on.

 Children of today know how to take care of themselves. They are much better at saying ‘This is what I want. This is what I need. This is what will make me happy. Now, do it.’ The parents who are living with them will say ‘Who are these children?’ Many of us were trained to be seen and not heard. When people asked what we wanted then, we spoke. But, we never said ‘I will like this, this and this....’

 How many of you have been surprised by your own children? How many of you ask yourselves ‘Whose children are they? Where did they come from?’  Some of you may say if you were still in Vietnam, maybe these children would be more respectful. Many times, that was what the grandparents say. ‘Bad, bad. What’s going on here?’ I believe that people must become much more clear about how to talk in terms of what they need, what they need to let us know.  They need to express their feelings. We tell that to our children all the time.  ‘Please, talk to us. Please share your feelings. Please know you are your own person.’ When they do it we ask ‘What are you doing?’ We should encourage children of this generation to be their own people. Of course, that’s what the Canadian culture teaches children: be your own person; you have rights.

 We have a generation of children who are much more clear, in my view, of what they need, what they want, and what they feel. This is very difficult if you are living in a society with grandparents, your generation, and your children because it will be labelled as disrespect.  It will be labelled as something wrong.  Because we don’t know that we have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, often we become very confused. We don’t know whether we are right or we are wrong. How many of you don’t know what you’re doing sometimes?  People that juggle situations get very stressed.

 Anybody today who are able to juggle career, family, friends, community, your own cultural roots, and all trying to get some kind of social life will feel stressed. Often, you feel that you want to tell everybody off. However, we have been trained as women:  that is not nice. We are not supposed to say: leave me alone; get out of my life; and, give me some peace. What do we do instead?  We look very unhappy. Very few of you go around, looking happy as your husbands would like. And we usually look very over-burdened as though it’s very tough living this life. Children ask what is the matter and what do we reply? ‘Nothing.’ There’s obviously something going on but we say ‘Nothing, it’s good.’ Then, they think that they do not have to fix anyting. We have to open our mouth more often and tell them honestly how we feel; what we need; and who we are, rather than just have to take care of other human beings in the world.

 It was interesting of the first speaker to talk about how women were leaders in your country.  In many ways, a revolution began with women leading.  Of course, if you look at the history of the world, they have been leaders in probably everything, not only in the family. We get all praise for being the family center, but women have broken traditions and broken ground. In fact, we often have done the fighting to change the world to demand that it must be different than this.  At this time in Canada, women have to stand up.

 Women have to have a voice. Women have to believe in themselves, because no one else will have the time nor the energy to do it for you. We must all work together. I believe very strongly of the women of today, but we must work together in a group. We need each other’s support. We need to talk honestly.

 Many of us pretend that we are better than we are. We go to social functions. When people ask ‘How are you?’, we say ‘Fine.’ We are not fine.  Most of you are actually tired. You are stressed.  Some of you are in distress. It is hard to play all the roles that you play. Sometimes, I think, we have to be more honest: I’m tired. We must stop comparing ourselves with other women in public. Everybody looks better in public!  We dress up, we put make-up on and everybody looks better. We look better at church. We look better at work. Yet, we don’t look so good, have you noticed that?  We are more irritable and we are more reactive. Sadly, this is where most of us do our reactive work: in the family. Our whole society believes this: do your best out there. When you go home, everybody can relax.

 I find interesting the female who does not take that advice. Often they say ‘I will relax after everybody else is fixed.’ There is no time for you after that, though. How many of you everyday get up in the morning and say ‘I am a miracle. Everybody who needs me today will be very fortunate! I am a somebody and I am going to actually act as I am somebody. I’m going to be clear about who I am today’ How many of you can look in the mirror and say that?  It would be good to teach your family that you are a miracle. (I don’t mean anything against men; I’m just talking about women today. If I was doing an audience about men, I would say how marvelous they are too.) However, today it is a women’s conference and therefore, I want to talk about what women need to do.

 It’s good that men are here so when you do what you do, they won’t be in shock. If some of you are married to the women here, when they are talking tonight about being a miracle, you’ll say: ‘I agree’ rather than ‘where did you learn this?’ It’s always good to come together to be learn so that we actually have the same language. It is important not only to your cultural language but to the words we use to talk about ourselves. We have to ask ourselves when we wake up: ‘Am I going to put too much into this day than it’s humanly possible to do? Am I actually going to do more than a human being could possibly do in a day so that I will live the whole day stressed?’ You can’t keep up with all you have to do, so you are always moving very quickly. There’s no downtime. You just keep going and going and going. We must learn to live in the present moment. The only power that we have in our life is over the moment you have right now. We do not control the future and the past is gone.  We can learn from the past. We can plan for the future. But, the only time zone we can ever live in, is the present.

 Many of us in Canadian society live in the future: when we retire, when we get marry, when we build the house, when we have children. It’s all about the future. How are we going to get our life together next week, next month, next year?

 One of the best ways of de-stressing, keeping yourself in balance, is to live in the present. You don’t have power over the past and you don’t have control over the future. However, you have a lot power on what you will do today. The other thing you have power over is: your attitude and your attitude to yourself.  This means what you’ll be satisfied with and what you will not be satisfied with.

 Many women tell me that they are very satisfied with their crumbs of life.  I always ask why they do not want the cake.  They usually respond that the cake would be too much trouble. If I get the crumbs, at least I get something. But if you settle with crumbs, no one will ever know that you want the cake. Often we model what we are willing to accept or what we are willing to do by what we say.  When people give us gifts we don’t like or when people do things which are not helpful; we don’t say anything.

 We suffer in silence. If you want to be cared for, be very clear with the people in your life how you want it to be.  If you are having a birthday and you want it to happen in a certain way, tell somebody. It has nothing to do with being loved. You may think that ‘If  people love me, they know what I want.’ I don’t think so. People know what you want if you let them know what you want. If you tell them what to do and they still don’t do it, write it down. ‘Here is the list of what I would like and how I would like it. If you love me at all, you will attempt it. If you have trouble, consult me, and we talk some more about it’. People who love each other do not necessarily understand each other, especially,  if they are male and female.

 Men and women are different.  They are not alike. They do not think alike.  They do not operate alike. They do not feel alike. That’s good. We put the two groups together to create reality. It also means that we have to educate each other all the time in term of who we are.

 First of all, women are not over-emotional. Women are the carriers of emotion of society, but we are not over emotional. We just deal with emotions better than the other gender. We do more of it, so, we are more comfortable with emotions. It is not true that when women bring emotion into the picure, that we are no longer thinking. We can take it in and we can feel. That’s the nice part of our gender. We should teach the males of this generation that they can do both too.

 It’s fun when they can tell us their feelings. We can tell them our feelings and we can share our best.  The quality is about sharing. Quality is also education. Do not assume that everybody knows you. Your mother, father, children, not even your spouse knows you. Nobody knows you unless you let them know who you are. A lot of messages in this society say that if people love people, they’ll know what’s in their head.

 Women get caught in this a lot. They don’t let anybody know what they want. Then they feel very depressed because nobody gives them what they want. For example, take Mother’s Day. Do you know that many mothers do not design Mother’s Day? Children do not necessarily design it. You should be designing Mother’s Day. It’s your day. It would be nice if you decide your birthday too.  It’s your day, the only day that actually is given to you in a year.  But all too often, we wait to see if anybody is going to do anything. Instead of saying: tomorrow is a very special day. I’m assuming that you are all prepared already. But if you are not prepared, here are something that you could do to get prepared. Furthermore, I’m not going to eat food that I don’t like. Here’s actually what I would like on the menu. Instead, most of you say: ‘You shouldn’t tell anyone what you want or what you like or what you need.’ Then, you become very sad that nobody takes care of you.

 If we are to juggle our life, we have to be a lot more clear about who we are and to value ourselves as who we are. We should treasure the fact that we are the caregiver of society. We just don’t have to be the only caregivers of the society. We should be prepared to give these skills away. Actually, we are prepared to teach other people, our children how to build relationship more equally.  We are prepared to struggle with our own parents to help to see that we are not wrong in the way that we are living our lives. We are different because we live in this country which said that human rights, women rights, children rights are equal to men’s rights.  That’s the country that’s struggling hard today to make that happen.

 Your coming to this country means that you join the struggle. Let me assure you that Canadian women are not very far advanced in term of taking on their own sense of being a woman or their own sense of being a person. I think Vietnamese women or women of other cultures assume that Canadian women are just way up there. We tell people what we need. We are very clear and assertive. No my dears, we are playing the same game. We socialize also in a male-dominated culture. Therefore, it’s a struggle that we all share. It’s very important for you, as Vietnamese women, not to assume that if you talk to us, we will not understand you and that you will not understand us. We are all in the same place. We are so willing to suffer. I see all these women walking around saying ‘I have a terrible life.’ When I ask if I could help, they tell me that it is better to suffer. No, actually, it is not better to suffer. It’s better to stop and to think about ‘What can I do? What am I able to do? What am I willing to do?’ to help other people understand it.  It does not have to be done in anger, either.

 How many roles do women play in their life? They play many: daughter, sister, wife, etc.. The average woman in Canadian society keeps an average of 18 to 20 roles a day. A human being is only able to play of 8 to 9 roles a day.  Here we are, as women, tormenting ourselves each day: ‘Why didn’t I do more?  Why didn’t I call my sister? Why didn’t I call my brother? Why didn’t I volunteer in that committee?’ Well, basically, it is not possible to live up to 18 roles/day. You cannot humanly do it. You can get about 8 or 9 done reasonably well. If you get beyond that, you will be just like a robot, running here and there yet not being able to stop and listen to what people are saying. You can’t because you are always on the move. Some of you think that you play more than 8 or 9 roles/day.  I would say everyone in this room is actually trying it or keeps doing it.

 Research is now being done on women in the workforce. When they were asked ‘What would help them the most to balance work and family?’ They said ‘flexible work hours.’ They need flexibility to be at home, at work, catching up with their children, etc.. They also said the next thing which would be most helpful is childcare.  18% of children in this country are cared  in licensed care.  The rest of the children are somewhere else, being cared for. This in turn, makes us very anxious about our children’s whereabouts. It’s hard to be at work and not worry. Women, in general, are much more unlikely to compartmentalize.  When they go to work, they are still thinking about what’s going on at home.

 You tend to carry your life with you wherever you go. We should be saying instead: ‘I’m here, they are there. I have to trust that everything is just fine.’ We have to learn how to set boundaries around the way we worry. You have no control over what you worry, you end up feeling very tired and overwhelmed. Make a list of what you worry and set aside seven minutes per day to do it all. When you do that, you will realize how ridiculous it is:  we all walk around, dealing with all these emotions that drain us and don’t help us at all.

 It’s the same with guilt. Women are known for their guilt because we want to be good people. It’s not going to help you actually feel anything about yourself, except lower your self-esteem. If you are going to worry and feel guilty, you must limit it as much as you can. If not, you would feel much more frustrated, vulnerable, and exhausted.  Our joy in life is that we have the right to decide what we will do. When you feel worried, guilty, streessed, please go talk to someone. Women often think that they have to know everything and be able to solve other people’s problem. You can’t be good at everything. Ask for help when you need it. It will give you more options. Be careful not to compare yourself to others. We do not need to do this because it robs us of our own power. In life, we are always in progress.

 Let’s make some decisions today and not waste our time to regret about what we have not done. Remember to live in the present. Have a sense of humour. Trust your intuition. Remember to have roots, your own culture. Don’t ever give up those traditions. Value your own culture, but also join up with others. Be proud of what you bring to this country. Please remember, as you are developing your roots in Canada, your wings get stronger. As you lift off, and as your children lift off in this country, they will fly with strong wings. They will know who they are. They will know what they are here to do. They will know that they are gifts in many ways to our country. Don’t forget that each of you is a miracle. I expect all of you, at the end of your day, to look at what you already did and what you have already accomplished. Celebrate being you. I believe the way we learn about our life is by celebrating the moment, celebrating who we are, celebrating how far we’ve come rather than how much further we have to go.