I wrote this several years ago for More.com. It is even truer today. And it still annoys me.
How much will you hate me if I tell you that the word ‘reinvention’ is beginning to irritate me. Buzz words have that effect on me. Their familiarity breeds contempt, not to mention antipathy. Today in my annoyed state, I started thinking about what reinvention actually means. Is this a word that actually applies to us?
According to the dictionary (Merrimen-Webster) there are three meanings for the word reinvention:
1 : to make as if for the first time something already invented <reinvent the wheel>
2 : to remake or redo completely
3 : to bring into use again
At first I thought that Definition #1 didn’t really apply to us. I even started to write… “It doesn’t apply unless we’re getting extremely esoteric, as in reinventing the midlife woman….” Oh. That stopped me.
Reinventing the midlife woman—isn’t that exactly what we’re trying to do? To take the tired old truisms about women in midlife—what they want, what they’re capable of, what they look like, what they deserve—and make a new model. A new wheel, to continue the metaphor. One that is smooth and perhaps bound in rubber, rather than rutted and cracked and woefully off-kilter.
But that’s a grand concept, and Grand Concepts tend to give me a headache. Besides, they’re only good when you’re in grand company and since it’s just you and me here, the whole notion is just too impersonal.
Which leaves me with #2 and #3. Can I own one or both of them? Well, not really. I have a problem with “to remake or redo completely.” I don’t want a complete redoing. I don’t even know that I want a partial one. That smacks to me of a total dissatisfaction with my self and my life—which is just not, for me, the case.
And #3, “to bring into use again” also seems somewhat direr than I feel. What part of me actually needs to be brought into use again? Has something in me atrophied over the years? My ambition? No. My drive? No. So what, then?
If I really think about what I’m doing here, it’s not reinventing my self; it’s just continuing along the same plane of development that I’ve been on all along. And realizing that, I see that the only definition that applies is the Grand Concept, reinventing the midlife woman. That’s something that we do as a group, however. It’s an aggregate of each of us continuing along our same planes of development, wherever they may lead us. Individually most of us are not reinventing ourselves—no need to—we’re just evolving.
And you? What does reinvention mean to you?
Photo credit: care2.com
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I love the term ‘re-inventing.’ In my mind, the word ‘invent’ has always been associated with ‘creativity’, a wide open world, no boundaries. As a properly-raised Southern girl who was taught not to draw outside the lines . . . the term gives me permission to do whatever I damn well please. It allows me to invent whatever career I want and to be the person I REALLY want to be.
{ Or should I say, “I’m finally realizing that I don’t need anyone else’s permission to be the person I want to be!” }
I don’t know that I have an answer either, though I have written, I’m sure, about reinventing myself from a business/career/job perspective. But there is something about reinventing that hints of “not good enough” or trashing the original for something spiffier.
You use the word ‘definition’. Maybe our dialogue is an attempt to redefine the conversation, rather than reinvent. To shift attitudes, to change words and language to help us focus on what it means to be Midlife in our time?
I think you’re right, Walker, about redefining the conversation. And my sense of what’s being redefine is mutable as well. For instance, as I get older, I keep aging out of the cultural conversation, at least as far as They are concerned. That happened when I turned 40 and stopped seeing myself in the women’s magazines. Now popular culture has caught up and the 40s are well-represented. The current focus seems to be the 50s. That’s great, but what about the 60s?