It recently occurred to me how extraordinary women are…
I know you are thinking… ‘Of course we are’… ‘I know that’… ‘Is she really only understanding this now’…
I mean really amazing… Have you ever thought about all the different roles you play in one day? I had never thought about it until recently… I took our ability to be so many different personas for granted… it’s just who we are… But think about it…
Women are like a one man show… multiple characters on the stage of life… performing for a mostly appreciative audience… Swapping between characters faultlessly and with great compassion… being who they need to be when they are needed… and all the time our own selves are concealed underneath… waiting for the curtain to drop so we can just ‘be’ for a small moment…
In a day I can wake up as me… but within seconds of my eyes opening I have already assumed the mantle of wife and partner… A cup of tea later… back to me and I am writer and blogger thinking about what might amuse or interest us in our French Essence world… totally forgetting about the ‘other life’… When I am here on the blog… creating content or talking to you… it’s all me.. all consuming… I never think about the rest of life or the other roles I play…
Then the phone rings… and I become a friend… a girlfriend… A listener, a counsellor… a co-conspirator in all things fun and feminine… me, but a different me…
The mother role is perhaps the broadest of them all… the greatest part in a lifetime of varied roles… As well as being protective, nurturing, fair and patient in any one day… we may even be personal assistant, wardrobe advisor, financial planner, housekeeper, travel consultant, chef and driver…We know our lines, our movements are well rehearsed… we don’t have the luxury of an understudy waiting in the wings to prompt us if we slip up…
We are aunts, great aunts and sisters… more varied parts to play… Being an aunt is not the same as being a great aunt… and being a sister is entirely different again… yet women can be all these people in the one moment… without missing a cue… Women understand the petite nuances of relationships intuitively… women instinctively play these multiple roles without being aware that a small miracle is taking place. For that is what it is… nothing short of miraculous…
We are daughters… the hardest transition of all, especially as our parents age. Always the child, basking in the warmth of parental love, yet sometimes the family ties unravel. Nature can be cruel… and life is never perfect… Our roles may reverse and our mothers and fathers will become childlike… and we women will be obliged to become parents all over again.
And all these scenarios can happen in a day, even in a few hours… and I haven’t even mentioned the complex cameos of grandmother, grand daughter… employer, employee… Exhausting when you think about it… but in reality this just happens.
Is it the same for men? I don’t think so… Tell me if you disagree…
I am not so sure that men are as chameleon like as we are… I think they tend to be who they are most of the time… more one dimensional… more pragmatic… which is not to say they don’t deal with the same situations, face the same dilemmas or have the same compassion… they surely do… but I don’t believe they morph in and out of character as we do… Women take everything to heart… which is why they can give so fully and so selflessly of themselves…
Women… A unique, a remarkable and inspiring force… Take a bow… and listen to that applause… xv
Quote from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen… here
