Barbara Ward-Finneran
HE SAID.... ARE WE DIFFERENT?
Absolutely, positively, definitely different! Is that really a question?! Thank God we are different. Isn't that part of what keeps life interesting. Okay-- with it, with difference, comes it's fair share of challenges too. Yet - too much the same is just overrated, BORING!
Instead of "different"... aren't we two halves that create balance. Like what day is to night and night is to day. Beautifully different, yet one cannot be appreciated without the other. This duality when correctly combined is what can stimulate peace and harmony. In the time of basic man and woman when the human race began, (and until more recent history,) - there was no questioning the duality or the roles. They just were - and they were accepted. For a very long time none thought one superior or more important, but, they were two parts that made a whole picture. There was an appreciation, perhaps non-spoken, of the mutually supportive roles of the man and the women. Together they created family and function within their corner of the world.
Perhaps modern "man" has messed this up by blurring all the lines. Somewhere along the line... two parts fitting together to make one complacent and balanced whole became a comparison and or competition of which role was more important or better. Did that create "feelings" of the dominate and the oppressed? Did that awareness of roles being lesser or more - separate rather then build? Did that create a difficulty for smooth role reversal in situations where it should and could work? Did it force the stereotyping that Tony points out -- isn't as black and white, or day and night as it seems to be? Isn't there more accord when the pieces fit rather then fight for attention?
Yes, Tony, I believe we are "wired" differently... yet I will agree there are similarities. We all have our soft and hard side and attributes. So whether talking one person, one pair, or one race, we need those differences and we need to value the sameness that can also be found. Having a touch, or brush of the opposite whets your appetite for more of that - that is what helps the different pieces fit.
We need to get past the comparisons and instead value that one does not exist in all it's brilliance without the other. How can you compare the day and the night? They are each astonishingly different, amazingly beautiful in their own right, yet if it wasn't for the darkness would we appreciate the light? It is better not to scorn the differences but to be empowered by them. To allow them to help bring out the best in you, using our differences to make ourselves the best sum of our parts, as a person, a pair or a race. To complement and balance the human equation and make it whole. Make us whole in that way that we aren't whole alone.
