Half of happiness

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

There is an established tendency to look for your soul mate: "Where are you, my half, I miss you so much …". The halves have been searched for for many years: men and women, boys and girls. There is an unspoken opinion that until you find this very half, you yourself will be incomplete, inferior and, of course, unhappy. And only by reuniting with the one (s) that was originally prepared by fate, you can find yourself, become happy, find the meaning of life, and so on.

The process of forming an attitude to the issue

This is explained quite simply from a historical point of view: if you are inferior and insufficient, it means that you cannot quite make decisions, and your parents (guardians, neighbors, an occasional trader in the bazaar) know better that you are your soul mate. They will find him, bring him by the hand and marry him off. And since he is your only possible fate and half, it makes no sense to look for something in return. As fate decided, so it will be (and if at the same time the inheritance does not have to be divided - double happiness). On the other hand, if you are not ready and able to conduct a relationship, then the search for the perfect half, without which life is meaningless, is a good excuse for your own loneliness or tens (hundreds?) Of exploits. "I'm looking for her alone, half of happiness my ". I would like to wish good luck and call a psychoanalyst. Why?

Because a person in this situation is a plug who is looking for "his" socket, without which he is practically useless. Something incomplete and imperfect, something that needs improvement, additional details in order to function normally. And man is still something more complicated than a plug. Much more complex. But it was precisely the plug-in attitude towards a person (to a greater extent, towards a woman) that remained the leading one for a long time.

The situation began to change only in the twentieth century. But not all at once: at first Pavlov reduced him to a set of reflexes, and his followers called him a biological machine. However, after the war, when it became clear that everyone's life is a value, that everyone is unique and inimitable, when, on the basis of existentialism and reflections on the meaning and transience of everything that exists, humanism began to grow, and then flourish. At the same time, the first philosophers appeared (and they sometimes are half a century, or even several centuries ahead of and thus determine public opinion), who for the first time thought: can someone who considers himself a half be a full-fledged person?

Of course, changes in social and family life played an important role here: people began to choose their chosen ones, their family values changed. In Russia, for example, the ideal of a woman among women now and the same parameter forty years ago coincide only by twenty percent. This can be explained in a simpler way: if then the ideal woman spat on herself and her aspirations for the sake of the family and the husband whom her parents chose, now she will think three times before deciding which from the following list is more important for her: to graduate from university or to have a child, to realize themselves or find a husband. However, changes have also occurred in the thinking of men, although not so global. Now there are many more people for whom their position is important, who prefer to see themselves as whole and do not want to be someone's shadow or live with their own.

After all, a person who considers himself to be something inferior, who is confident that he needs something else to succeed, is too distracted from self-understanding by the search for the external, constantly elusive and distant. A little later (in the third quarter of the twentieth century) it will be said that the constant striving for happiness (as well as for orgasm) repeatedly removes what you strive for. Indeed, in fact, happiness is an accompanying process, it arises spontaneously when you are doing what you love, walking in a spring park with your loved one, or pulling a lapdog from under a car. The following opinion seems even more sad: a person looking for his soul mate, in fact … very rarely can truly love.

Seeking true love - does not love?

At first glance, this seems paradoxical: a person who is only engaged in looking for love cannot find it. However, the same mechanism works here as with happiness: love is an accompanying process. But this is not the only reason: in fact, a person who considers himself incomplete is too fixated on something external, insignificant: he is looking for a chosen one by hair color, religious aspirations, financial condition, weight category, professional activity or place of birth. Or he is trying to find a loved one among his complete opposites, turns this into the fulfillment of a certain mission, a complex party assignment, on the resolution of which the fate of the planet depends.

However, there may be a lot of variations in such behavior, but the symptom, the main symptom is the same: either a complete lack of plans for later, or a too clearly planned future. What does it mean?

In the first case, the mechanism of a fairy tale works: I will meet him (her) and everything will be fine, we will live happily ever after. That is, finding the "right" person, as it were, solves all problems by itself, because if a half is found, then it is impossible to wish for more happiness, which means that not a single cloud will dare to darken the series of endless sunny days. On such reflections, a reasonable person will say that everything will die out from the drought, and he will be right: it is because of such an attitude, the lack of a clear understanding of the reasons for one's own actions and high expectations that the boats of love break on the reefs of family life. There can be two sides. First: how can a half (feeling like me, fully understanding me, and so on) not understand that today I don't want to cook dinner, take out the trash, talk, think … the list goes on and on. Second: how can a half, a part of me, not understand that the apartment should be clean, I don't want to eat meals from the microwave every day, discuss her (his) idiotic friends?

After all, half is a normal person with inherent flaws, a person who is not at all obliged to guess in an hour and a half about the thoughts of the person with whom he lives: this comes gradually and not in all pairs. It just so happened. But a cloud appears in the sky. And it darkens the happy holiday of love with everyday life. And gradually the clouds thicken and turn into clouds, and the clouds lead to a thunderstorm, which not every couple can survive.

In the second case, the picture is even more sad: a person is looking for a specific, clearly represented being, which will be exactly what he wants, without the slightest right to make any changes. In the Soviet version, it was like this: I will marry a simple girl (I will marry an engineer), in ten years we will have an apartment, a TV and a refrigerator, in twenty years - a car, three children, a summer cottage and a ficus in a tub. The chosen one will work from nine to five, then come home, we will watch TV together, go to bed, get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to work … and so - every day. And on the weekend we will go to the dacha. The picture is worked out in such a way that not a single painter dreamed of, however, if after a couple of years the chosen one suddenly decides that he prefers to work as a model from three in the afternoon until nine in the evening, go to rock concerts and, instead of being carried away by the "magic box", read fiction, - their duo won't get the slightest chance. Simply because in this case, the attitude towards the chosen one becomes worse than towards the damaged part of some car-making machine. Didn't meet expectations. Not mine half of happiness … Get out of my life. After that, both in the first and in the second case, a break follows, and the search begins anew. And so it is endless.

What else could there be?

Search for the ideal. Only a perfect person can be with me. But it is known from old history that an ideal can also seek an ideal. What happens then? Obsessing over one person who refused, the inability to believe in his departure, refusal to perceive reality, escape to another, more comfortable one. Very often you can hear something like "but I was his ideal soul mate!" However, the person decided that this was not so, moreover, he is sure of this, and nothing can be done here. It is difficult to imagine how many fans write dirty letters to the wives or husbands of famous people, because they are sure: they are the "real halves", only they, they are the ones who are suitable for this ideal, while completely not knowing it - only being in the illusion of dating … Moreover, a non-whole person simply does not want to look around: he reaches for something that he cannot have, it seems to him that he can find his happiness only somewhere in another universe, while not trying to change himself and escape from the world in which he lives; he wants someone to come and, touching with a magic wand, transform everything around. And if some kind old classmate comes and tries to do it, he is harshly put in his place: after all, this is too boring, he is too ordinary to work miracles. Thus, everyone, except for infinitely distant people and himself, is denied unique qualities - there is I, there is a crowd, and there are Those who are above the crowd. Typically childish attitude to life, blind to everything, destroying all good egocentrism. This often leads to drama, assassination, suicide, or simply tragedy of a lifetime. However, a whole person will never impose himself: he values both his own and others' freedom too much, preferring not to dissolve in someone, but to be close to him, to build his life with him, and only with his consent. Otherwise, unevenness turns out, which disfigures relations beyond recognition, makes one or several people unhappy at once - and this never helps to strengthen mutual understanding and love.

The difference in worldviews

What is the difference between the other approach? A person must first realize himself as an integral personality, understand what he wants, why, where he strives, what is the main thing for him, what is not very much. Let's just say, makes a detailed map of his inner self, without which he will not be able to understand his true motives.

This does not mean that you need five years with a psychotherapist to deal with your cockroaches in your head: it is enough just to understand that they are, and that some of them are important, and some can be ignored. And then it will be clear what you can warn your future partner about: sometimes I am like that, but it's not because of you. Just realizing what is really the cause and what is the consequence, that it hurts all the time, and therefore it cannot be hurt, and what will just scratch unpleasantly - but this is a trifle, you can greatly change the relationship for the better.

This leads to the fact that eyes open: a person really begins to see the main and the secondary, the important and the unimportant. And then the color of another person's hair (skin color, eye shape, nail length, biceps or waist circumference) becomes a secondary sign, that is, something that will never become the main one. Of course, this does not mean that a person loses individual tastes for the appearance or clothing of other people - he simply will not alienate his neighbor from himself just because he looks wrong. He does not strive to be kind and good with everyone: he just by himself treats people with great understanding. With more attention to the inner world of a person than to external attributes, if the latter, of course, is not the main meaning of the interlocutor's life (this, unfortunately, happens). And, of course, if a person understands himself better and understands better what he wants, what is really dear to him, he will never arrange scenes for many hours over trifles - just to quarrel. He will strive to reach mutual understanding on a controversial issue in a different way - after all, in addition to a dirty quarrel, there is always a discussion, there is always an opportunity to leave the topic in order to return to its discussion a little later. And it is much more important to keep a loved one than to defend your position every day. However, this question remains open.

Experiencing difficulties

Of course, this does not mean that whole people are doing well - they see the world in wonderful colors, immediately find the ideal life partner, bathe in contentment and miracles. Of course not, but such a philosophy of life forms a certain attitude towards troubles, and to non-reciprocal love, and to disappointments in work or creativity. All people have crises, the only question is how they are experienced. For some, the marriage of a classmate to another is a reason to abandon God, friends and parents, withdraw into oneself and go through this defeat for the rest of his life, not trusting any other person and rejecting everyone who is trying to help in some way. For others, this is just another reason to reassess values, look around, do something new, find new friends. Not to run away from problems, but to calmly go through an unfavorable period and take some steps so that a favorable one comes as soon as possible. And this does not simplify relations, but simply makes them different, fuller, more interesting, more harmonious.

In conclusion, I would like to say that, of course, it is far from always possible to clearly say that "you are looking for your half of happiness - this is bad "or" you are looking for another unique person - this is good. "It's just that in any case, experiencing yourself as a separate (not lonely, not self-sufficient, but a nominal separate) unique person who wants love, not ready-made recipes, who wants what something reliable, but not immovable and eternal, allows you to look at the world with different eyes. And this look allows you to notice more, gives other opportunities, and therefore the chances of drawing a lucky ticket becomes much greater.