So I am supposed to be working… concentrating on doing something productive… focusing on paid employment and getting results. But I can’t. I can’t focus, I can’t concentrate and I can’t read the reports I am supposed to be checking. All I can do is keep checking Facebook. I need to snap out of it. I need to get on with my job and yet here I am again finding another means to procrastinate.
So why am I checking facebook? What’s so important there that I need to keep checking? Status updates. Who is friending who and what they’re saying. Last time I wrote that a new generation was incapable of human interaction and I find myself suffering this week from the same disease. Why is it so hard to make a phonecall? Why are we stalking on facebook preoccupying our valuable time when all it takes is a phonecall?
I won’t make one though. It’s not the right thing to do. I should be waiting. It shouldn’t matter. Enjoy the ride they say. Live in the moment but yet I find myself in a hurry to keep on moving. Why do we put so much pressure on ‘new’ things that we snuffle them before they can even take alight. I love my life. I love my friends and my family and most of the things that I do.
I am a good person and I do my best to give more than I receive but just for a little while – I want to get. I want to feel like I can be got. I had a conversation today with a very smart man – yes they are very few and far between and yes he is married, but he was onto something today. He said that men in the 21st century are lost. For western men the closest thing we have to rites of passage are those undertaken by knights in fairytales.
He said that men want to sweep women off their feet, they want to save the fair maiden but 21st century women are confused about the process. While we want to be saved and swept off our feet our behaviour and independence says that we don’t need saving “I can walk myself to the castle door and don’t you dare lock me in there.”
On reflection, his analogy (admittedly stolen but further exaggerated) while extreme and some would say outdated, I can’t help but think he is right. I want the grand gesture, I want to be desired and I want to be swept off my feet. But only when I want it. How is any man supposed to know what to do with me if I only project behaviours of independence? I know I am a capable, strong and an independent woman. I know that I can be gracious, pig-headed, stubborn and judgemental. I don’t need to be rescued from anything and yet all I crave emotionally is to be rescued. But if I’ve slayed my own dragons already, what is my knight supposed to do? Hold my sword, brush my hair back? That hardly sounds like the role of a knight in shining armour.
Maybe I am supposed to show potential knights what I want. Let them know that it’s ok for them to trot past on their white steed and pick up my hanky from the ground. But my problem is that when they do, my Rapunzel tower builds itself and the walls go up. The walls go up because I think that the potential knights are not knights at all. Just jokers and fools who are out to make fun at my expense. Fools that will pick up my hanky and then run away only to drop it out of my reach only to laugh at my stupidity.
So the question is, how many potential knights have I told to, “Bugger off! I can do it myself!” in order to keep them from laughing at me? How many potential knights have been put off by the Rapunzel tower I build around myself. Has my sense of independence ruined any chance of ever being rescued? My fairytale is far from complete but maybe it’s time to let the knights pick up my hanky. Maybe it’s time to take the risk that the knight is as he appears and really wants to pick up my hanky. Just one little problem… How do I tell the knights that I’ve changed my mind?
life in big frilly knickers 