Sunset

Last night while out for a run the sun finally broke free of the dense blanket of clouds, casting a few moments of fiery golden goodness on the city before it slipped quietly below the horizon.

To me, that's when nature's free nightly light show really starts to get good - when the leftover hues - the pinks, yellows, oranges and purples - grow richer and climber higher into the evening sky, leaving a lasting impression long after the sun has bid its goodbye.

Which got me to thinking. It often isn't till we've said our goodbyes that the true impact and value of the connection or experience is felt and understood.

and yet...

...a girl I knew in Grade 6 (who I believe I went to Wrestlemania with to see the British Bulldogs) just facebooked me. As I perused pictures of her at some air show with her three kids in the back of a mini-van I thought...

thank god I'm not there yet.

not a rant but kinda.

Saturday night I went to see Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, which can be best described (not by me rather someone more..critical...) as a play that "analyzes the relationship between women and labour at opposite extremes of the possibilities available to working women..."

The opening scene - an up and coming business woman hosting an existential dinner with, among others - a female pope, a Geisha of sorts, the wife of the Marquis and a barbaric female - was rather heady and intense to say the least.

It has caused a great deal of reflection on my experiences and self-perceptions as a woman and generally of those around me. In my circle of brilliant women we:

• are VPs, Directors, Managers, Leaders, Business owners and in-demand freelancers.
• are the major income earners in our households, and when not, are at least equally compensated.
• own our own homes - many, independently.
• balance the desire for career fulfillment with that of the desire for growing a family and seem to make both work.

For my generation and the ones that will follow, I believe the line between career-goer vs caregiver though not erased, is sufficiently blurred and will continue to be so.

But for all the ladders I climb, mortgages I assume and babies I might raise (from China, Africa or because of a drunken pact I make with some male friend), I fear I will always feel an inequity amongst my peers - that my position and place in this life will lack true validation or worth until two little two words cease to apply.

Yet and Still.

• I'm still single
  
• Haven't yet met the right one.
• Haven't met anyone yet.
• She's still single
• Still single...just hasn't met the right one yet.

These two words imply there is something that needs to be achieved. That something is missing - there's an incompleteness. That the things I am most proud of mean sufficiently less until I find the one I can call my equal.

Not yet anyway.

daydream believer

if i devoted 1/10th of the energy and mindshare I seemingly dedicate to fanciful daydreaming, toward the achievement of my actual 'real' goals and dreams, i'd likely be much richer - in all cents and sense of the word.