Today is Saturday. A day of sunshine, rain, clouds. A day of birth, a day of marriage. Today people brake up, get divorced or lose all of their money. Today someone will give up. Quite some will come to the end of their lives today. Someone will get hired, another one fired. Somewhere someone begins a journey and elsewhere a voyage ends.
Today is also the International Women's Day. For years I have pondered how to deal with it.
At times, I feel that this day is an important reminder of all the inequalities between sexes – not only between men and women but also between those who cannot, or do not want to, be defined. A reminder of differences in wages and job opportunities. A reminder of how chances in education, becoming a parent, and gaining recognition and respect are not the same for everyone.
Other times, I find this whole concept of "Women's" Day as useless, backward, and underlying as Valentine's Day. A celebration, whose only purpose is to emphasize the superiority of hegemonic masculinity and oldfashioned, parochial values and beliefs. Why should we proclaim once a year how important women are for the world? Why should women be differentiated from men, from transgendered, from intersexuals? What does it mean to be a woman anyways?
These are tricky questions I do not have an answer for and most likely I never will. What I do know however, is that too often we wait a reason to act. "A reason" to do something, to feel something, to speak up. No matter how clichée it is, we should live every day like it would be our last – do the things we want to do instead of waiting for some great sign.
Today is as insignificant and boring as any other day. And yet, today is the day when you do the most important choice of your life. The day when you say the sweetest words someone has ever heard. The day when you are happier than you will ever be.
So, embrace it, because today is freakin' awesome!
