On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good

by Elise Loehnen

Everything we come to be, to know, and to do as human beings we have to learn from other human beings. Indeed, educability is our species’ trait. And that is why to be human is to be in danger, for we can easily be taught many wrong and unsound things.

We are so fixated on an authority “out there,” we’re missing the miracles inside, all the moments that illuminate our connection to something bigger within ourselves.

I’m driven by an ever-present fear: If I don’t do enough, I won’t be enough.

Accepting sloth as essential, we can demand support, embrace rest, and reserve our strength for the worthiest work.

Accepting envy as essential, we can open the door to every possibility and invite our wanting to enter.

Accepting pride as essential, we can develop and embrace our unique gifts.

Accepting gluttony as essential, we can metabolize our emotions and sate our deepest hunger.

When we let our minds run over with likes and dislikes, we are disappointed when the world fails to meet our preferences.

It is the arrival fallacy, grounded in consumerism: What you finally buy never satisfies.

Accepting greed as essential, we can clarify our needs and then work with each other to ensure they’re met.

Accepting lust as essential, we can reclaim pleasure and harness the full power of our creative potential.

Accepting anger as essential, we can better recognize our individual and collective needs, and forge a more equitable future.

Accepting sadness as essential, we can embrace our full humanity and reengage with the cycle of life.

Mary Magdalene represents all women—the way we’ve been stripped of our authentic worthiness, left to plead for redemption.

We must reject the early patriarchal idea—an idea that still endures—that the feminine must be controlled and choked out and that the rights of all women must be limited to ensure the dominion of (white) men. In turn, men must let their feminine emerge and dull the edges of their masculine.

We are not yet lost. We just need to find ourselves again and, wings unfurled, fly home.