I was in a small café in Sweden having coffee one morning. The waitress was not Swedish, but Spanish, and spoke both Swedish and English. As she wiped off the table with a sponge, then stopped to take my order, there was no barrier between us. She was a woman, doing what I had done a thousand times. She made coffee in the mornings, got her children off to school, and tried to make ends meet at the market. She was very bright; her snappy eyes told me that.
Yet she served. She managed things there in the café. She was capable of more. What we exchanged across a cultural barrier was instant friendship because we shared a kinship with women everywhere.
Women have always been able to make do out of what life hands them, to create an ordered universe in the midst of chaos and stress. Women have always been able to make something from nothing, stretching the stew, making the worn-out clothes or opportunities into something new, smiling and caressing in spite of their own inclinations to give in to tears and fatigue, mothering the world. Yet, like the new friend I made in the café, while their hands were performing the task at hand, their minds were racing on. Assimilating. Analyzing. Philosophizing.
Someone has said that men are effective while women are reflective. That may be true. So much of men's thinking is applied directly to their work. The result of their thinking is output, income, product. But much of what women think about does not create tangible product. Historically, their assigned roles in society have prevented this. Instead, they ponder the meaning and quality of life. Such pondering may not result in consumable products, but it can produce great souls—souls who ask why instead of merely what and how. Women, after all, are about the industry of the heart.
