A post for today

In case you missed it, it is Women’s day today. The day when businesses fall over each other with special offers for women, when the media honours women from every field many whom they may have never realized existed on 364 other days, when oh never mind, you would have got the picture by now.

However well-intentioned it may be many of them are hollow and everyone seems to have an opinion either for or against the celebration. Personally I say, why not? It’s like a birthday, everyone has one and we celebrate that day even if we do not celebrate the person the other days and everyone is entitled to one more day of being celebrated. So let me first wish all the women a very Happy Women’s Day.

Having done that I would like to expose one fallacy many hide behind, that men and women are equal; they are not, not always. There may be one more, men are superior to women, they are not, again not always. So if you wonder then “is the corollary right” and have expressions varying from delight to ridicule I would like you to pause and hold that thought for a moment. Take a look at the picture below

You can choose either piece to represent a man and a woman and spend a lot of time measuring the bigger piece and I will wish you well if you are able to accurately measure it. But I would like to draw your attention to the two broken segments and see that the break is uneven, in one bit one side is bigger and just below the other side is bigger and it continues. Each piece separately looks unfinished but together looks complete even beautiful.

The challenge therefore is for either piece to seek completion in the other and be aware that in some areas men are simply better and in some women are. To those who ask can a piece not survive alone or look good by itself? Of course it can. Will that unfinished piece look good? It will for those who think so, beauty after all is in the eye of the beholder.

One endearing memory I carry of my mother. One day working in the kitchen making food she burnt herself, the usual cooking incident for her but I was surprised to see her ignore it because at that moment food for her sons was top priority. I had to stop her and then get a cream for the burn. One endearing memory I carry of my father. There were days when he had to go with less food when he was working alone, so that he could save and send money for us. Makes you wonder, who therefore is stronger…