Realization came late

My impression is that men could quickly say that women are sometimes so different, irrational and that it is just not possible to understand them. And by saying this they suggest (not verbalized mostly) that men are "superior" to women, especially in the manner in which a person's behaviour is predictable and logical.

As a member of the male specie I would naturally take the side of my fellow members. But, something happened which somehow makes me think we men misjudge the whole affair and there is more to it than meets the eye.

I am in the 60+ age group and it was my unfortunate experience to have had two major operations in the past year. What made these events more traumatic was that apart from minor visits to the doctor and/or hospital, I was fortunate to have enjoyed good health all the years prior to these operations. I thank the Lord that I am on the road to full recovery.

What these operations have done is to sharpen my awareness of what happens to and in my body, almost like a constant monitoring exercise. This conscious, or even sub-conscious, awareness is something that was never really part of my thought processes when I was younger.

Now for the point I want to make. Browsing the web pages on health matters the other day I came upon an article which made mention of some of the things that a woman's body goes through in the short as well as long term, things that men do not experience. For instance mention was made of menstruation, menopause, hormonal activities, etc. Of course men know that these things happen but their lack of comprehension of these matters pushes the topic mostly to a very vague phenomenon, which is easily "explained" by the expression that women are sometimes illogical and are so difficult to understand. But the reason the article mentioned these things was to illustrate the fact that women from a young age are far more aware of their bodies and what happens to it than men are of their own bodies.

And because of this continuous awareness that women pay to their bodies they keep themselves in better health than men and that this could be a major reason why women on average live longer than men!

So my fellow men folk, next time a woman behaves irrational or like a "typical woman", maybe we should remember that this behaviour is part of a bigger picture which has a beneficial effect on their health. (Granted, I think even if we do comprehend these complexities it would still not make the irritation it causes more bearable!) It is just a pity that we men do not also have this continuous awareness of our bodies and that we must sometimes first get bypasses and pieces removed from our insides before we start paying the necessary attention to what our bodies tell us.