Our Lives Prescribed by Lefebvre

On page 34 of The Everyday, Henri Lefebvre ends his essay with a lingering thought, a chance for readers to participate in his cognitive brain storm.

“The more highly qualified and technical an activity becomes, the more remote from everyday life the time it takes becomes; and the more urgent the need becomes for a return to the everyday. For the housewife, the question is whether she can come to the surface and stay there. For the mathematician, the question is whether he can rediscover an everyday life in order to fulfill himself not only as a scholar (even if he is a genius), but also as a human being. And the ‘society woman’? No questions, your Honour. […]”

Well, let’s bite. Ok Kristina; put the book down and THINK.

Lefebvre’s notion of the housewife, mathematician, and society woman, is intriguing in the sense that In his eyes, we cannot be connected with the everyday if we are associated with only one of these “occupations”.

The housewife, constantly disconnected with the world outside her front door, is drowning in her ‘everyday’ while the world revolves around her, not reaching even the peripherals of a multi-tasking woman’s eyes. This, is quite possibly too much ‘everyday’. In Lefebvre’s words, “the question is whether she can come to the surface and stay there.” (random thought-This quote is similar to a Jenny Craig commercial I heard today announcing their customers would “take it off and keep it off”, which is humorous to me because the intended audience for this commercial is most likely the housewife, who is constantly striving to surface, and “stay there”).

The mathematician, with his head always in an equation, whether solving one on paper or contemplating the equations of the world, is therefore disconnected from his own everyday life because he has become so desensitized to the world around him. Unable to quit analyzing everything, it becomes impossible to lead a normal life. Almost oppositely, in the case of the ‘society woman’, while she does not lack global understanding she fails to peer beneath the surface of herself, others, and her societal resources. This “shallowness” would not lead to daily joy, but a life of unfulfilling material happiness.

So, how could the house wife, mathematician, and society woman escape their lives into a more connected relationship/understanding of the everyday? If a person can successfully balance a little of each of these occupations, would they then be more in-tune with their everyday life? As a student I live with my fiancé and cook and clean for the both of us (housewife), I attend classes and spend hours on my studies (mathematician), and I work two jobs (society woman). However, as I sit here in my home for hours on end, I have trouble agreeing with the fact that I have a greater everyday life than those who are out in the world doing what they love. Or, maybe the point is not to have the best life, but the best understanding of your life; an understanding that, while I am but one human being out of billions on this earth, I make a difference…to me.