There is an island in Greece, called Mt Assos. What makes this the most ideal place to meditate is that no women are allowed in the area. For reasons that I needn’t even bother explaining, such a sanctuary would hold tremendous appeal to all my male brethren as a much-needed patch of sanctity to escape to, when the world becomes too much of a bother. And what makes it truly sustainable is that only men are allowed to go there. I am not making this up. In fact, only monks live there while other less wordly wise types like you and I can visit this haven where men are always right whenever we want, and breathe its serene, fresh air in all its glory.
But before women get jealous, of course I wondered if a similar place exists for their kind as well, but nothing turned up. No fruitful search on Google, no leads upon asking around... and so it is safe to conclude that either such a place is impossible to envisage or that women have finally found a way to keep a secret. However, the only way two women who know of such a place could keep it a secret is if one of them were dead and the other were marooned on the said island.
It isn’t unfair that men have such a place to escape to while women don’t. The latter have their own escapes right where they live already — public toilets (which still doesn’t explain why women always visit such in twos, but nevertheless), salons, and shopping malls. And when all else fails, us men provide them with meditative (comic) relief.The social nature of women’s retreats has driven me to this conclusion: Women don’t meditate, not because they don’t need to but because they just can’t. The way women are wired, they can’t have an empty mind. Men, we thrive on it. We pine for moments of absolute emptiness. When you ask a man what’s on his mind and he replies ‘nothing’, it is in fact the truth. Our minds can become a white canvas on which we are doodling with a white marker and nothing need emerge from it at all. Women just can’t wrap their heads around this concept. To not think of anything at all is not a possibility.
Even the Yoga-types have to think of something (focus on your breathing, for example) in order to not think of the million other things — how their partner sucks, how their friends suck, who’s trying to destroy them, which new shoe just released, how to make their partner buy said shoe so that they can destroy their sucky friends by debuting it first at the next soirée — that plague a woman’s mind endlessly. With such a build-up, it is practically impossible to hope for salvation through silence.
So they opt for the other method — to embrace that which comes naturally. And thus, instead of letting it all die down, they fuel it on. They surround themselves with incessant chatter, bubbly banter and raucous, raving and looney rants about all and sundry. Which model tripped wearing what, which celebs split up and whose sports car rolled up in front of whose house — all these are part of the tactic called meditation, for women.
And then, when all else fails, like in the case of a power blackout, they find the nearest man to insult and injure by making him realise just how flawed and useless he is within the larger scheme of things. In fact, if Charles Darwin were a woman, she would have wondered how men have managed to not evolve for so long, and still survive.
In this light, the idea of being on a women-only island to find peace is like trying to develop social skills by conversing with a hippopotamus. And so, one concludes that while we men need more Mt Assos-es to escape to from time to time, women will always be much more at (inner) peace with social engagements and spots of interest to occupy them. Even Mt Assos better have beers and fries, though.
The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine
