...............................................Life from 0 to 21🔗

A child is born innocent and with a sense of completeness. Until the age of seven, before the social conditioning has taken a deep root inside, the child is not conscious of being male or female. He is centered and secure.

In the period from 7 to 14 years, the child is closest to his parents. From them, the child collects images about how the ideal woman or ideal man should be. For the male child, the suppressed half of his own personality is replaced with his mother's image and for a girl child, the suppressed part of her personality is replaced with her father's image.

Around 14, the child attains physical maturity. Now, the child starts looking for the 'ideal person' in the outside world. The child now begins to collect images from outsiders and media and builds up an image of the perfect woman or man.

By around 21, the identification with the media wears off but the ideas are already deep-rooted in our minds. Then a fresh search begins to find that ideal person in our real life. This is the search with the idea of how our 'would-be' 'should-be'. This is where the expectations start.

When you find the 'ideal person', you 'fall in love'. Life becomes poetry as the image of the ideal person and the real person seem similar from a distance. When the distance reduces, the differences become pronounced and now starts the 'chiseling' of the partner to match the ideal in the mind.

An important truth we need to understand is that a man is not 100% man and a woman is not 100% woman. A man is 51% man and 49% woman. Similarly, a woman is 51% woman and 49% man. To experience fulfillment, we need to be able to accept and express both the masculine and feminine aspects of our nature.