Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson
Read for: A profound perspective on how to view achievement in life, especially if you’re in transition; a 34-year-old echo from the aftermath of the 1960-70s civil rights and feminist movements that resonates today; a mental model for how we might shift ourselves to take climate action
This 1989 book, written by anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, follows the life stories of five women as they “compose a life” made of various threads of activities and interests. This seemingly mundane premise serves as a foundation for exploring transformational, mind-altering questions about how we define achievement and a meaningful life.
As Bateson reflects on the decades since the civil rights and the women’s movements, she writes:
“The process starts with the insistence that there have been great achievements by women and people of color. Inevitably, it moves on to a rethinking of the concept of achievement.”
She observes that we tend to think about achievement as a single goal, a sturdy statue, a quest with a clearly defined outcome.
“I believe that our aesthetic sense, whether in works of art or in lives, has overfocused on the stubborn struggle toward a single goal rather than on the fluid, the protean, the improvisatory. We see achievement as purposeful and monolithic, like the sculpting of a massive tree trunk that has first to be brought from the forest and then shaped by long labor to assert the artist’s vision, rather than something crafted from odds and ends, like a patchwork quilt, and lovingly used to warm different nights and bodies.”
Throughout the book, she continually works to refocus our eyes to recognize these “odds and ends” as monumental achievements in their own right. She notes that “women have been regarded as unreliable because they are torn by multiple commitments,” from marriage to relocating for a partner’s career move to caring for sick children or parents.
And yet, out of these interruptions and discontinuities, women have improvised — making new homes, taking leadership positions in institutions, building alternative visions of power, wiping noses and tears, making beauty out of odds and ends — to weave together disparate threads of life into a beautiful whole.
She goes further to argue that in an era of constant change, a careful study of this patchwork style of achievement can be instructive for everyone, including men and others who in prior generations may have toiled for the statuesque version of achievement.
The author spills hundreds of words trying to describe relationships that are equal (symmetrical) and where each participant offers something different (complementarity). The best examples she proposes are professional ones, where colleagues from different fields work together while each contributing their areas of expertise. But she never quite lands on a clear explanation or a perfect term that encapsulates her idea.
I get the sense she was responding to a divide between different generations of feminists, with the newer one being focused on equal rights and leveling the playing field (symmetry). Bateson makes a case for valuing differences and how they fit together (complementarity), echoing the patchwork quilt metaphor she makes throughout the book. However, she understands why the American bias for symmetry occurs:
“Nothing in our tradition gives interdependence a value comparable to symmetry. It is difference that makes interdependence possible, but we have difficulty valuing it because of the speed with which we turn it into inequality.”
In other words, we have few models of how to observe and celebrate difference without also immediately creating an underlying ranking. I believe this explains some of the tension we see today around diversity, equity & inclusion actions and those who fear losing power. Those working to advance DEI goals want to bring forth a different, better world in which many voices come together to creatively transcend seemingly impossible problems. Others worry about being on the wrong side of a new ranking system and perhaps losing cherished values from their own lineage.
Bateson observes that this accidental ranking can happen in well-intentioned circumstances, too.
“When any relationship is characterized by difference, particularly a disparity in power, there remains a tendency to model it on the parent-child relationship. Even protectiveness and benevolence toward the poor, toward minorities, and especially toward women have involved equating them with children.”