Let me take you down, cause we're going to Strawberry Fields
Today I saw two men having a very good time just talking about how beautiful a woman they had seen was. They weren’t lewd about it or loud, just kinda playful and silly like only really hard working people can be. These two gardeners (I saw them get out of the truck) came into Carl’s Jr. (yes I still am eating badly) and they saw an older women whom they instantly greeted. She wasn’t what I myself would even normally notice (in an attractive sense I mean) but after they had engaged in some obvious flirting banter (it was all in Spanish so I really couldn’t say what they were talking about) I myself was attracted to the way she was able to handle both of them. At no point did she drop her eyes or waver at anything they were saying. Instead I saw these behaviors coming from the two men as she answered them back in kind, like a mother and two giggling children.
Then I realized something. I was witnessing an ancient ritual, one in which the women was revered and respected by the males (and she knew this). She was in charge in this game and her element fell about the two men, who with muscle and sinew strove each day to turn nature into a picture we city folks can take comfort in. She with no physical strength was in charge in this arena. I remembered, in the way Socrates said we do, our distant past, the need for the men to provide food and safety and the women to build civilization. Men and women learned communication very differently.
Men, when hunting made no noise- if they did, they didn’t eat because their prey would be alerted and scamper away. But as men did have to coordinate their actions - they learned body language and gestures.
Women needing to coordinate their efforts as well to get many more tasks accomplished were freer to develop more verbal and precise forms of communication.
There is no record of how long this arrangement may have lasted in our history (or even if this assumption is correct at all) but we still have the behaviors almost engraved in our natures. Many of these old habits are broken in modern thought - but they never-the-less persist as our defaults. None of this stuff excuses bad actions or behaviors, but an understanding of it may easily broker a path towards true equality and freer communication.
Yesterday there was in my life just such a communication. With the exception that it took place around a copier and it wasn’t banter. It was another instance of a random person just talking to me. This happens to me a lot - even in stores or where ever I might be, for some reason people just talk to me. Some of the things they say- I am not sure if they mean to, but I just have that effect, I guess.
Anyway this young girl (lets call her Angelica) was telling me she was 30 years old - which anyone looking at her would never be able to guess, 20 at the oldest she looked. Angelica was saying she wished she was young again, and for the first time in a while I disagreed with that feeling deep in my soul. I was happy to be 34. I told her so, and she said:
“Well that depends on how you look at it, if you wanted to do things differently, not make the same mistakes, then you might wish you were young again, but if you made the right decisions then I guess you wouldn’t need to right?”
I looked at her and said something that I swear I have never read or even thought:
“Angelica, we don’t learn things for the past, we learn them for the future”. I couldn’t even believe that came out of my mouth! As I later told my wife about it she asked - “did that feel hypocritical?” (Sometime she says things and it takes me a while to cool down before I answer, but I didn’t marry her because she’s a good liar…) She was right, even as I enjoy my life I do find myself thinking all too much about how I would do it differently.
I have really been thinking of how to explain how revolutionary this concept is to me. All I can use is analogy. What a person does when they regret is fail to use a gift they have been given.
Imagine if you will, receiving a check for $500 dollars and then you are sad because you don’t have a bill or debt to pay. You wish you had all the debt you used to have so you could pay it. Further, you decide that you will throw it under your bed for a time when you do have a debt. You don’t invest it or use it to grow wealth to guard against future debt.
That isn’t the best analogy for how I felt but I just can’t really explain how much it meant, I feel like it’s the flesh for the verse I am going to have engraved on my nephew’s Christmas present. “In Hoc Signo Vinces”.
Then I realized something. I was witnessing an ancient ritual, one in which the women was revered and respected by the males (and she knew this). She was in charge in this game and her element fell about the two men, who with muscle and sinew strove each day to turn nature into a picture we city folks can take comfort in. She with no physical strength was in charge in this arena. I remembered, in the way Socrates said we do, our distant past, the need for the men to provide food and safety and the women to build civilization. Men and women learned communication very differently.
Men, when hunting made no noise- if they did, they didn’t eat because their prey would be alerted and scamper away. But as men did have to coordinate their actions - they learned body language and gestures.
Women needing to coordinate their efforts as well to get many more tasks accomplished were freer to develop more verbal and precise forms of communication.
There is no record of how long this arrangement may have lasted in our history (or even if this assumption is correct at all) but we still have the behaviors almost engraved in our natures. Many of these old habits are broken in modern thought - but they never-the-less persist as our defaults. None of this stuff excuses bad actions or behaviors, but an understanding of it may easily broker a path towards true equality and freer communication.
Yesterday there was in my life just such a communication. With the exception that it took place around a copier and it wasn’t banter. It was another instance of a random person just talking to me. This happens to me a lot - even in stores or where ever I might be, for some reason people just talk to me. Some of the things they say- I am not sure if they mean to, but I just have that effect, I guess.
Anyway this young girl (lets call her Angelica) was telling me she was 30 years old - which anyone looking at her would never be able to guess, 20 at the oldest she looked. Angelica was saying she wished she was young again, and for the first time in a while I disagreed with that feeling deep in my soul. I was happy to be 34. I told her so, and she said:
“Well that depends on how you look at it, if you wanted to do things differently, not make the same mistakes, then you might wish you were young again, but if you made the right decisions then I guess you wouldn’t need to right?”
I looked at her and said something that I swear I have never read or even thought:
“Angelica, we don’t learn things for the past, we learn them for the future”. I couldn’t even believe that came out of my mouth! As I later told my wife about it she asked - “did that feel hypocritical?” (Sometime she says things and it takes me a while to cool down before I answer, but I didn’t marry her because she’s a good liar…) She was right, even as I enjoy my life I do find myself thinking all too much about how I would do it differently.
I have really been thinking of how to explain how revolutionary this concept is to me. All I can use is analogy. What a person does when they regret is fail to use a gift they have been given.
Imagine if you will, receiving a check for $500 dollars and then you are sad because you don’t have a bill or debt to pay. You wish you had all the debt you used to have so you could pay it. Further, you decide that you will throw it under your bed for a time when you do have a debt. You don’t invest it or use it to grow wealth to guard against future debt.
That isn’t the best analogy for how I felt but I just can’t really explain how much it meant, I feel like it’s the flesh for the verse I am going to have engraved on my nephew’s Christmas present. “In Hoc Signo Vinces”.