I try to be Superman with all my might till the last drop of my blood. Like all other working women, I don’t know whether Superman is a superman as much as I am or if I have a claim to his throne without his inborn gift.
Between 08:30 and 18:30 during the weekdays, I am in the office, and also for a few hours on Saturday. My job requires attention as I deal with numbers; it does not tolerate sleeplessness or fatigue. Since I work in the private sector, there is no easy-money, and to put it mildly, I work a lot.
Now as for the other parts of my life, I have two great kids. Two small and wonderful kids who expect my attention: to play with them, feed them, bathe them and read to them; to take them out, to watch TV, to dance with them, and in short, to spend all my time with them. They are the best things that ever happened to me.
The other parts are not yet finished; I have just started. In 1996, I made my acquaintance with Reiki, and since then, it has been a part of my life. Since I obtained a teaching position, I have provided training. I love practicing and teaching Reiki, and I cannot think of a life without it. I love writing, too: I write in my diary and I write short stories. I write for The Wise. I really would like to be an author with my own published books.
I believe in the benefit of exercise, so I walk to work every day regardless of the weather conditions, which means I walk a total of an hour. Reading is another one of my indispensible pastimes. I try to read five pages every day, so in this case, it takes quite some time to finish a book. Nevertheless, I never stop buying books, and my library gets stuffed with them.
I love my family and I try to spend as much time with them as I can afford. I do not want to reduce my contact with them in any way. In the same way, I have friends and relatives with whom I want to be in touch with. I try not to ignore them. Of course, I get involved in housework and shopping; although, I have an assistant to take care of those things. As a woman, I take care of my appearance too. I love going to the theatre, opera and exhibitions. Twice a month I choose among them. I also share my life with a man, and it’s only natural for us to want to have quality time with each other. Besides physical efforts to perform all of these, I also need to make full use of my organizational skills. A day only has 24 hours in total with six to seven hours for sleeping and 18-19 hours remain. You must wonder how I can fit all of these activities into my life.
My Own Choice
I do not want to boil down this subject to a cliché, but “it is difficult to be a woman.” In my opinion, I should be dissatisfied with my complaints about the difficulty of something or even what it is that’s imposed on me. Looking at the list above, I can find nothing like imposition. Besides, the satisfaction I get while doing all of these tasks is worth all this haste. No, that is not what I want to say. I had never imagined getting married, wearing a beautiful wedding dress, having a wedding ceremony and having children.
As you age, changes occur as well. My dreams and wishes have changed. My hobbies have changed too. I got married and had children. I even liked having a child so much that I had another one. If they had told me about the rhythm of my current life 10 years ago, most probably, I would have said, “Come on, no way.” And I would have continued, “Am I insane to get myself into so much trouble? I cannot bear such busyness.” However, a human being is much stronger and more creative than they think. What is more, when you hold your tiny little baby in your arms, there is nothing you can do to make their life and yours more livable.
This small version of a human being tells you so much: that you’re aging, how much of your dreams you have achieved, whether you are lazy or industrious, and more importantly, how fast life goes by. Every minute I spent feeding my babies was an opportunity for me to get closer to them and to think about what I could do to have a more creative and efficient life. Giving birth to my babies made me question all of these.
You will either do whatever you can to melt the activities in life and do whatever you want to do or create excuses for your lethargy while sitting back and getting older without testing your creativity and endurance. This is the difference between an ambitious mentality and laziness. I want my kids to enjoy life, to consider the world as a playground where they can realize everything they want and to understand that they have the power to do that. I want to match what I preach and practice. If I have not understood this and if I do not use my power and creativity, how can I explain this to my own children?
Supermom
Our greatest excuses are always no time and exhaustion. If they were to be removed, I am sure we would replace them with others. We live as if we were on autopilot. This pilot protects us from being open to innovations, the probability of not using our creativity, and the power to understand our real potential, so I never complain about not enough time. By stopping complaints of tiredness, I can create time out of nowhere, and every time I see what I get, I’m surprised. The pressure of time, in fact, is a concept that changes in direct proportion to how frequently we use it as an excuse. This, I can see better in time.
Maybe Superman, who understands that he would not be able to compete with our self-created supermen, may have abdicated his throne and run away. If that is so, I will miss him only as a hero to add color to our lives. In any case, other Supermoms and I will not allow people to miss him by doing our best.

Berna Köker Poljak