Womankind November 2019

Editor-in-Chief, Womankind magazine “Wanderer,” once wrote Spanish poet Antonio Machado, “your footsteps are the road, and nothing more.” Machado, one of Spain’s most celebrated poets, was perhaps implying that our life unravels before us, minute by minute, a form of destiny in motion. “Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.” It’s an interesting way of viewing identity, since most of us tend to think of ourselves - the person we are today - as being quite distinct from the person we might become, as though the two will meet at some distant point in time, but certainly not now. Machado instead seems to suggest that the two are one and the same, or at least share the moment together. “By walking one makes the road, and…

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It’s the one question we’d all like to know the answer to, so we could just get on with it - the living part, that is. If we knew what the ‘good life’ entailed then we could shun the rest, and just concentrate on the important bits. But society has a tendency to derail us. We’re repeatedly told that the good life is about making loads of money, having a successful career, and buying as much as we can possibly shovel into our houses and garages. Some are convinced that they need to be famous and get their name up in lights for the good life to kick in. It’s worth remembering that the phase of flight for the Kunanyia stephaniae butterfly lasts a mere 14 days, long enough for…

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Some people like to think we have two selves, our current self who we have to put up with on a minute-by-minute basis, and our future self, the person waiting in time, which painstakingly metamorphoses as we advance. And it’s suggested that these two selves - your current and future self - are constantly wrestling for supremacy. The palpable larger-than-life self, with well-defined wants, and needs, and a current role to play within the family, workplace, and society-at-large, typically overshadows the poorly defined future self. “Live now,” the current self will say, “don’t live for the future”. Or, “what will come, will come, don’t force it”. Inert and passive, the future self is mostly unresponsive up until the day comes to its close. “You didn’t do anything for me today,”…

The mountain ascetic who shuns meat, television, alcohol, and doesn’t say a mean word about anyone, what willpower they must possess, we think. But what would you say to the suggestion that the mountain ascetic actually exercises no willpower at all? Rather, she has given herself no choice but to shun these things because it’s in her code of conduct, or mission statement. I shall not watch television. I shall not eat meat. I abstain from calling my neighbour a good-for-nothing donkey because it’s how I behave. Schools, universities, sporting teams, the military, all have codes of conduct for the same reason, to save people from the galactic struggle of having to exercise willpower or to do the ‘expected thing’. Thou shall not have a messy bed in the military,…