After selling a dress online today I got to thinking about decisions that are optimal, rather than ones that necessarily maximize any one of seemingly many equally important considerations as, even though the price I was offered for this particular item was a little bit lower than I’d originally hoped, agreeing to it felt right to me; and, as I often do, I was grateful for an opportunity, however small, to practice turning to my heart for guidance.

As I’ve been recovering from a bit of a rare cold, I also happened to re-watch a 2016 edition of Frontline (I’m not sure about you, reader, but, for me, Will Lyman’s voice feels practically like a lullaby) contrasting certainly narrativized but still informative summaries of former President Trump’s and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s biographies; and, for some reason, was inspired to specifically consider the throughline of gender-based inequity in both of their stories. I’d known both, of course, had encountered distinctly different rules applied to women and men at the intersection of marriage and career throughout their lives, but I began to see the difficulties inherent in navigating such rules in a new light.

When I was a kid, I remember so clearly hearing about President and Mrs. Clinton’s marital troubles and, from my limited perspective, feeling almost hurt that the latter had not left as a way of standing up for all women and girls. But I, of course, did not recognize how many systemic barriers seemed to be in place to prevent women’s advancement in the workplace while fastracking men’s, nor did I know what Mrs. Clinton’s heart was telling her to do. And it was touching to hear about how she recounted, very early in her career, having seen her passage of a bar exam as a sign that she was meant to take what appeared to be an unlikely path in her personal life.

Discerning the wisdom other people’s decisions can sometimes be an almost impossible task and I felt reminded today that even determining one’s own course forward can feel like a paradoxical undertaking if overcomplicated. As we probably all have noted, going with one’s heart seems always to ultimately lead to feelings of being provided for, comforted, and progressed forward; but seeking provision, comfort, and even professional advancement for their own sake are practically all ways to avoid finding them reliably.

We’ve all probably heard the old adage that in polite society, it’s ladies first. But, in reality, we’ve probably all observed the opposite convention in practice. A bottle of multivitamin gummies on my dresser encourages the consumer to “do something just for you,” and it’s obvious why: women sometimes do not feel comfortable putting their needs or aspirations first.

I love pondering the idea that mankind’s emergence from a materiality-obscured understanding of reality and of ourselves is only fully complete when everyone crosses the finish line, so to speak, and that it is in all of our best interests that everyone feel – and be – included and valued. For the sake of the completeness of such an undertaking, some people, including many women, have demonstrated a willingness to allow for there to be an order in place whereby the needs of others are temporarily prioritized. But I feel it important to talk about the purpose of such allowances in order to avoid a misinterpretation that would deduce that women’s rights are somehow less important or less large than others’.

In watching the aforementioned documentary, I found myself wondering whether I admired Former Secretary and Former Senator Clinton’s decision to step away from her career not long after law school in order to prioritize marriage or not. Of course, I doubt very many people care what my view on it is, but it seems to me that it’s the motive that matters; and I love to ponder the idea that God doesn’t give us “gotcha” decisions and that we can expect a progressive way forward to open up as we do our best. In moments lately when I’ve been working to determine what that may be for me, particularly after I’ve felt right about taking a step forward despite what’s felt like tremendous pressure to do otherwise, I find it helpful to tell myself “don’t just do something, stand there.”

I’m actually not sure I subscribe to many , if any, of the world’s “ladies last” traditions anymore, but I believe they’ve very often been implemented with good intentions. Regardless, as I feel I’ve described already, I believe that, despite appearances and what is sometimes referred to as corporate window dressing, leaving an almost totally unscrutinized and unaccountable stock market-integrated journalism funding model in place is almost more like opposing the collective progress and well-being of all mankind by saying “ladies never.”

As I have been communicating for a long time, there are actually a variety of quite good reasons, I believe, why a Wall Street-integrated journalism sector – an entity whose lifeblood, or media stock, is itself a shadowy derivative of American currency artificially inflated by the sector’s inherent ability to get away with gender-based predation via the suppression of journalism – is undesirable as a replacement system of governance for America; and I believe it is not just time, but past time, for the country to confront the matter.

And what I believe what may most need to be underscored about this is that the problem is known. It is arguable even a variety of corporate journalism-adjacent nonprofit news organizations that benefit from inflated perceptions of the media sector’s overall legitimacy as well as podcast pundits who seem to have seized on, rather than ameliorated, the unrest catalyzed by the fusion of the stock market and media sectors – have sought to fill the vacuum of information with their own opinions and wishes – even, if I understand correctly, starting a new university – to try to remake an uninformed world to suit themselves personally and financially. (It is not totally clear to me, as a side note, what the difference is between a University of Austin or an MSNBC for what appear to be practices of the suppression of ideas and advertisement of opinion for purposes of fomenting unnecessary and uninformed, but profitable, conflict.)

Still, it feels practically impossible, at times, to discern why others make the decisions they do or even, sometimes, to know for sure why I feel inspired to make my own decisions in a particular direction. But I’m grateful to be able to do my best, knowing there is an answer to this problem that is best for everyone.