The following are my thoughts on this lovely blog post by Phil Bolsta.
If I remember correctly, there’s an Arthurian legend which asks the question, “What does a woman want?”. After a bit of questing, the answer is revealed to be: “To have her way.”
And in Phil’s post (apparently the result of his own arduous quest), the answer is: “To be cherished”.
Maybe this is a commentary on the overall or primary self-image of women in different times and cultures. In medieval Europe, the underlying feeling may have been: “Women have little power and mostly exist to help men have their way.” Today, the culture may be implying to great effect: “Women are currency and have little intrinsic value unless they are developed and assigned some appreciable qualities, such as beauty, motherhood, career skills, etc.”
But what I’m really trying to say is that all these women’s needs for power and adoration are only superficially human. Power and adoration are aspects of worship and devotion. And simply cherishing is a very sincere way to go about it. I think women constantly seek validation of this goddess image they carry inside.
Otherwise, women never quite seem to believe that men (or society in general) “get it”.
It’s no surprise that men often feel as if satisfying a woman resembles an epic undertaking, such as a quest. If you look through the mythology and symbolism of it, a quest is basically a search for the invisible essence or spirit of things – and usually for the purpose of making that spirit manifest so it becomes visible to a needy world.
Regardless of whether a woman sees herself as the image of a goddess, she will likely still want a man to “get it”, i.e. to recognize the invisible spirit within. She wants a man to see what she sees…even if she doesn’t see it clearly herself.
