Namaste

We were sitting in my living room, two professionally successful women and I. We spoke about the management of our responsibilities. Soon enough feelings were expressed of how too many professional women are suffering from what appears to be chronic failure to carry over this success into their personal lives. They are not necessarily seeking to have their achievements matched, but it cannot be too much to desire to be espoused to strong, rounded men. Without even knowing what Proverbs 31 says, somehow we have men across generations who are seeking such a wife. It was said that because many children are raised by strong women, the budding women continue on that strong path while the budding men look for women who are strong as their mothers. Having not had the example of a strong father to help them properly develop the necessary traits, they seem to resist the natural leanings towards domestic responsibilities especially if they can find a woman to continue the job of their mother in their lives. So they go and come expecting that things will be taken care of, and if things are not, they have a gift for mentally enveloping themselves in a neutral zone until it is.

One young woman recounted how she has had to step away from the man she loves. He was almost always disorganized and his attempts to work with the prioritizing framework she provided would be short-lived, then they’d discuss it and he would try again having apologized and smothering her with lovemaking, then he loses it again, and the cycle goes on. Basically, once things are fine between them his efforts disappear. It’s only at the expression of her frustration that he tries again. It puts a strain on her to keep things together for the sake of love, and now that it is the strain is twisting her into a version of herself she does not recognize, she has released him. An old lover has recently awakened to the value he lost in her and has asked to be back in her life. He wants to marry her. He is aware that she is in the midst of construction and she advised him that she needed $100k to complete her house. He does not have that kind of money. She asked what was he returning to do, love her through the stress of acquiring the funds to complete the project? And love her even more as she pays the mortgage? And where would the loving take occur, in the unfinished building or at his place? He does not have a place to accommodate her. This story is so familiar it is worse than a broken record.

The other woman said that she and her husband are doing some home improvements. The required sum was paid to a contractor and work got started. One day the workmen did not show up. Two days the workmen did not show up. He is a quiet sensitive guy, so she opted for pillow talk, and in the most loving way inquired of him how he proposed that they deal with the situation. He could not say. She danced around the issue a bit more then asked him to have a talk with the contractor about the downtime. He got out of bed while mumbling that she should talk to the man. Their money is going down the drain and she has to be the one who stand in the pants and talk to the contractor. She did not. She sat there and told me that wives need to be more patient. God requires obedience. If He says the man is the head, wives should settle down and allow the head to be the head. She further noted that it was Eve’s impatience, in not waiting for Adam to get her something to eat, that caused her to go to the tree alone and be tempted. Had she waited until he found it fit to rouse himself and go pick her a fruit the whole humanity story would have turned out differently. I’ve never heard that version before. They eventually come around, you know, we just need to keep praying. She told me. I’m a mother. That’s how mothers talk about children. We can’t be talking the same about spouses. But, bless you my dear, as you continue on in obedience and patience.

In my most Southern Baptist tone, I recite: And now abideth faith, hope and charity…the greatest of these is charity. The same Book says: Faith without works is dead. Now if faith, hope and charity are tied together, and charity is the greatest of the three, then hope without works is dead, and love without works is also dead. Since the order is great, greater, then greatest, love being the greatest is three times deader than dead faith. The complaint is that women are tired of love without works (it was full of talk though). Dead love is a real drag and the constant fight against its gravity should be no one’s full time job. Even morticians use trolleys, they don’t bare the weight of the dead all day…year. We know that charity must be demonstrated tangibly, so we give alms, donate food and clothing, etc., but we delude ourselves that the other social relationships will prosper with a word of encouragement and a pat on the back. The love that doesn’t cost a thing is dead and should be reserved for our dead loved ones. Yet we buy wreaths, caskets, tombstones, etc. for them. Faith is the substance of things hoped for… The evidence of things not seen. How do we acquire substance and evidence without work? Abra cadabra? Our deities require substance and evidence from us, so we find the resources to give or do good deeds. Our friends too, and we pay for a round of drinks or get favours done under the table. Our children endlessly demand evidence of our love. It’s exhausting, but we step up to the plate. The spousal love remains the strangest as somehow being four-foot in bed amounts substance.

Another young woman and I were talking. She is self-employed with a husband who’s in his 60s. She said from the inception she has been telling God: No, this can’t be my husband. He is the opposite to her in many ways. God insisted that he was. Maybe we have said ‘opposite sex’ so much that we manifested it on a larger scale than we intended, and God, not caring for our games of the psyche, insists that we work together no matter what the perception. We should try referring to each other as the complementary sex. Thus, she accepted the ring he eventually placed on her finger. She soon found that too much time was being spent away from her business while she coached him on his role in the relationship. Then divorce seemed easier. And she had a long talk with God. Then she decided to pull him into the business. It is working. He is coming around. He spends four days per week helping her in the business and his social and relationship skills are developing nicely. Like many of us he is also getting the hang of technology, but spends too much time playing games on his phone. So she came up with a plan for him to look at one or two motivational videos daily. He agreed, but continued to play games. Now she selects the videos she wants him to see and forwarding them to him so that their conversation later in the day when they are relaxing could have real content. He’s coming around with that too.

In class we were addressing issues of the skin when it was mentioned that there is research to the effect that many Blacks folks are unnecessarily Vitamin D deficient. Here again, love is costing us. The love being cool in our air conditioned cars, bedrooms, offices, etc. Inadequate time is spent in the sun, and the synthetization process that allows for the uptake of Vitamin D requires that the darker we are the more time we spend in the sunlight. We see advertisements on where and when to get fast foods, but where are the advertisements on the necessity of Vitamin D and how to tailor our outdoor activities to benefit accordingly? I guess we can pop a pill. Will it work? Vitamin D is fat soluble so the only way to effect the whole process is to have adequate amounts of fat in our system, and adequate is not determined by intellectual pronouncements about the masses, but at the cellular level of each individual. Where are the guidelines on how to make the pill option effective? And for how long will the pill work before I absolutely need to head out into the sunlight? On the bright side we can use whitening lotion to reduce the melanin, that way we only need to step out on the porch briefly. Not trying to get burnt now, are we?

Riding on that conversation was the importance of hair. Waxing was up next. That used to be something we read of Madonna and cringe, now…we have acquired a love for it. Waxing is a necessity, some said. Okay. It’s evidence of our love for the smooth feel of the skin. Alright. The hair takes longer to growth back with waxing as against shaving. Point taken. One student said she is losing the love for it because the pain of a brazillian wax never gets old. Doesn’t the numbing cream work? Maybe she is more sensitive than other clients. Further, waxing was cited as evidence of our love for our spouses; they prefer the baby-smooth feel. Uh-huh? Then pedophiles should go free if grown women are paying serious cash and pain to remove hair so that their men could feel like they’re with a pre-puberty female. How could it be a crime when they actually go after pre-puberty females? They were prepped for this. I asked: If each strand of hair has a tiny muscle attached to it, do we create some degree of collapse in that muscle when we uproot the strand? If the answer is yes, what happens to the local muscle or nerve tissues when we wax off hundreds of strands at once? And again, where are the appropriate health care advertisements on this? Maybe we should call 800-TIPS.

I attended a meeting recently, and when it was time to leave I turned to the elderly gentleman near me and asked if he was going my way. He was. I told him he now has a passenger. We headed out to his car that’s about 25-30 years old. The guy with the new car parked next to his looked over at us and said: Boy! Women like old men and old cars. Old or new, I like a Camry. I have also heard that old cars are like boys. They have no behavior. So I now interpret that remark to mean women like old men and boys. Hmmm. Maybe it’s the men in the gap who are giving us beans in our relationships because we take one of them instead of two from the extremes. The subliminal message that a woman really needs two men could be right: the old man who hopefully has his shit together and can be a real source of guidance and support, and a boy who has no care for wisdom but is full of passion. Such would not be licensed, so we try for the boy and hope for maturity, or we try for the old man and hope for adventure. Better still, take the guy in the middle and hope he has the actions to back up his words. We’d faster hit the bull’s eye if we try darts or rifle practice. But for those who have, kudos. The remainder has decided to be content with being in the vicinity of the bull’s eye; a commitment that needs daily renewal because life is cruel enough to remind us that we’re still off the target.

So it seems, again, that women are really the problem. We cannot have two men embodied in one, nor can we have two men as a package deal, and maybe worse yet, we can’t be perfect in ourselves because it was the man who was made perfect with us on the inside, so we have to go back to the man to create perfection (i.e. until we transform enough experience otherwise). Hence we pick at nits and gnats to vent our frustration because the realization of this can be truly alarming. The perfect man is the man with the woman who dares to go through all the trials necessary to sculpt her into that unique chip to fit back into his block. So giving our husbands hints geared at transforming their lives is not good enough, we have to do as Saul was admonished: stop kicking against the prick and work with it. Give them sex like a handy handkerchief. It must be there whenever they reach for it so that assurance of their oneness with their feminine side is ever available, then they would be able to function with the all-round strength that we desire of them. Otherwise, significant levels of stress will continue to be experienced by the man who needs the feminine balance for his masculinity and can’t find it in any of his pockets.

Patience, ladies. Patience. Through it we can see that our cries for help are clearly heard, it is just that the masculine response time is different. He will come around, don’t fuss about when. Through patience we also see that once sex remains harmonious there’s no difference as to who talks to the contractor. It’s the same. The two are one. The same is the case of the ex-lover who wants to return. He should be allowed. Once they are married, what’s hers is his so no distinction should be made over whose property it is or who pays the mortgage, her paying is as good as him paying. The two are one, that’s the order. Respect to the order. Alternatively, love can be left dead. No need for a resurrection. But next time they’re looking for love, they can consider venues where people who know quality go and are ready willing to pay price no matter how high. And don’t be bothered by the scoffers. The service industry is saturated because gold-digging is hard work, so your pot of gold would be well worth your labour.