We’re obligate symbionts
(Pandemic Diary - day 82)
From my journal: 19 May 2020 (Tuesday)
I think it’s impossible for a man to truly understand a woman (or vice versa). Not that there isn’t recognition and at least preliminary empathy (we do have a common ancestry). And not that there aren’t times when we feel the distinct influence of “the other” within ourselves, shaded aspects of the masculine and the feminine dancing across our many individual spectrums.
We are mutually obligated symbionts, after all, clearly not the same species, but eternally reliant upon each other, and eternally trying to understand.
***
That little bit of philosophy was triggered by a tiny and inconsequential passage in Another Roadside Attraction (Tom Robbins): “There is a time in the life of every little girl when she wants to grow up to be a nurse.” I read that as I was getting up to exchange my empty ice cream bowl for a glass of bourbon, and as I was pouring the drink, that phrase “mutually obligated symbionts” also poured.
It’s not a new metaphor (it’s been banging around in my head for at least 40 years), and I don’t know why that quote pulled it up again, or how I’ll use it.
At least I’ve done my duty and captured it, useful or not.