Walking Alone

 When I was in Boulder, Colorado in the late Spring, Summer and early Fall, the weather was just right for an evening walk down to the Pearl Street Mall.  I would walk alone looking here and there at people, storefronts and foliage.  What I noticed is that rarely was there a woman doing the same thing.  One of the reasons, and many women know this, is that it is simply not safe, or at least not as safe as me walking alone.  There might be a woman going from one place to another, on a mission, shopping, getting something done, performing a task.  But not just meandering along in curiosity about their world around them.  Too many men see women not so much as individuals, persons, as objects to satisfy something in the man.  In such a culture, women are made for men, and not to be themselves.  I ask myself how many girls are taught to find a man than to find themselves.  To be taught to not find yourself is to be taught “non-existence.”