The myth of a saviour

 

 

There was this idea I used to like that if women want men to behave like knights, they should behave like princesses and sit and wait in their room in the attic. 

Apart from the obvious nonsense of this sentence, and I don't want to take the discourse into the field of sociology, I have found some interesting points. 

I remember a story about a queen, maybe Marie or Isabelle (according to my Mom's update) who lived in a beautiful castle in the south of France some time in the middle ages. Her husband, the king, probably some Louis went out to "free the Holy Land" from its inhabitants. He was not the first, not the last to do so. Anyway, Isabelle was a devout wife and she loved Louis so much that she wowed that she wouldn't take a bath or change her clothes until he comes back. He had been staying for 14 years when she finally died. She was quite strong by the way, to survive that long. Obviously in the middle ages the people of Europe had strange ideas about hygiene, but this is extreme even in those circumstances, otherwise it wouldn't have remained as an example of marital dedication. 

She indeed was the ideal example of a woman sitting in the dark and waiting for her Knight to save her. From her own inability. 

Isabelle was just sitting in her room, praying for Louis, thinking about him, writing letters and poems to him. Obviously, as a queen, she didn't have to do anything, nannies raised her children, servants run the house, politicians and army men run the country. But, again, as a queen, she had many opportunities. If it was me, and I was sitting in a palace alone with my children in the south of France, I would definitely take them to the seaside and to the medieval towns to some nice restaurants, or I don't know what other opportunities were available at that time. Whatever it was, it might seem dull or strange to us but that was the norm for them. And again, we are talking about the south of France where the sunshine has the colour of the corals and the shadows, colour of the lavender... All that seemed grey to her because she only saw Louis in front of her eyes. And that made her lose her interest in life. Her soul was buried under the grief and her life energies were crippled. She was waiting for him to come back and save her from this miserable state. She was just lying down, helpless. Like a baby. 

So many people share that as a first experience in this world. Being there, cold, hungry, in pain and no one comes. Yet the thought of giving up on those who are there to help is impossible. They are the only lifeline. 

Later the deep thought of "I deserve to be treated this way, they can't be bad so I must be" would develop as an explanation of the situation but the very first sensation is only a feeling of passive helplessness of waiting to be saved. 

Action feels like severing that bond which is a lifeline. It is unnecessary, they are surely coming to save us. That's how the passive waiting, a state similar to death, is presented as the only way to live. 

Isabelle died in her filthy clothes at her self-made prison at a paradise-like seaside. So many women bury themselves alive, passively surviving but not living, waiting to be saved. To go out and fight for their dreams feels like giving up on the "magic" to happen. They do everything they have to but nothing that would make their souls dance. Why? Over the obvious mind explanations that "I don't have time" there's a deep hope that one day something magical would happen and they just have to wait. "Just be patient and everything will be fine". Familiar, isn't it? For years and decades, inner and outer advisors are keeping women (and many men, too) in the false hopes of staying motionless and then something will change miraculously. 

We are not babies. 

Most of us are women who have given birth already. The best advice I have ever got about giving birth was "it's you who is doing it". It's not just happening to you, you are not just going through it. You are doing it. You do the pushing, the breathing, the holding breath, you concentrate, you take all your power. 

In order for something to happen, something miraculous, because again, those of us who have babies or are close to babies (I felt it first time when my first niece was born, so you don't need to be a parent to experience it) know that it is one of the greatest miracles of life, we need to be proactive. We need to gather all of our forces together and push until something new comes to life. 

Action is not the opposite of life, it is the very thing that participates in its creation. This is how a miracle happens, not by sitting around passively. Because by being proactive, we don't deny our trust in the miracle. We deny our outdated passive role. 

To be active, one needs to trust. Much more than by passively waiting while in doubt in every other minute. If I'm active, I use my resources in a certain direction. I take risks. I don't take risk if I'm not 100 percent sure that it's going to work. 

We are not babies. We are adults and creators of our destiny. We do believe in miracles and trust God. That's why we are not afraid to take risks. We go and do it. 

And by looking for the original ways, we must not stop somewhere in the middle - ages. As my father said at the first interview he gave, "we must go back to Adam and Eve, well, not exactly, but to the seventies". 

Now we must go back, not to the middle ages where women were expected to sit and wait, but to Mary, peace be upon her, who was told right after giving birth to shake a date tree. She did - or at least tried, if you have ever seen a palm-tree, you know that a woman who had just given birth will never be able to shake it - but the reward of her efforts was fresh dates for her and her baby, peace be upon him.

Or let's go back some more centuries, to Hagar. She had to run between the hills seven times looking for water. And then the water came from where she needed it the most, next to baby Ismail, peace be upon him. And we still can drink from that water. I have drank from it 

That's how important actions are. That's how much they mean trust and belief. And that's when miracles happen.