With both Women’s Day and the Olympic Games now in our recent rearview mirror, it made me think of something someone said to me recently.
In discussing how we are affected by trauma, she said that it can be compared to being in a motor vehicle accident – the car is spun around and when it comes to a standstill, what you see through the windscreen in front of you, is the horrific view of the aftermath of the accident, while in your rearview mirror it is not visible. However, as you move on and away from the trauma, through your windscreen in front of you, you will see the open road ahead of you (the future), while in your rearview mirror the accident is still visible (the past).
The moral of the story was that the view through your windscreen is always bigger than the view in the rearview mirror and that if you do not eventually make a conscious choice to turn the proverbial car around and start driving away, the biggest thing you will always see is the trauma. However, the trauma never truly goes away – it still remains visible in the rearview mirror, but the longer you are on the road, and the further you drive away, the less visible it becomes.
Bringing this back to Women’s Day and Women’s Month, it made me think of how far we have come in the development of women’s and human rights.
During a visit with friends recently, we joked about how the children of today will never understand the references to things that we had to deal with in our not so recent past – things like fax machines, tapes for both music and videos, cheque books, and one friend even said that her 5 year old did not know what a DVD was for as nowadays everything is live streamed.
Jokes aside, the truth is my grandmother was not able to vote. Nor was she able to have property registered in her name. Even my mother was still subject to the regime of “marital power” which was only abolished in 1984. When the Olympic Games started, it would have been unheard of for a female athlete to compete.
In this women’s month, may we not drive so far away from our past, that we forget where we come from and forget to be thankful for the freedoms and rights we have. And may we, while keeping our eye on the rearview mirror, continue to drive to a better future for all.
Mariette van Zyl | Director
KVV Inc Attorneys
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