By D. Salazar
When you are little you want to live in a castle, with draperies and carpets and flowers, and lots of shiny toys and beautiful things. At that time there is nothing you can do to achieve those things, except through luck or ability to find hidden treasures. When you are older, a youth, you want a flat. A place where you can have friends over and they will all fit. At that time, you don’t have enough means to acquire it, but you have skills. Sometimes, they’re enough. When you grow even older, and you become a woman, you want a house, quiet and safe, comfortable, with enough space. At that point is where people tend to tell you that you shouldn't have stopped following your dreams, because that is the ultimate sign of becoming old for good, and there’s no turning back.
Then is when you freak out, when you seek loneliness, apartness, to discover which was that dream you should have never stopped following. That thing that is making you old: where is it?.
It is likely that you spend more than half of your waking time dreaming, while you do those mechanic things, like driving, or walking on well-trod ground. You dream.
Like humans, dreams evolve.
Some elements prevail. Fear, especially in waking nightmares, is very eloquent. Your mind sinks into autopilot, it wanders. It happens at every age.
Women who cover themselves completely when in public, act as an invitation of beauty. If a woman were, for example, deformed in such ways as to be shocking, she’d still act as an invitation of beauty. She stands tall, covered in a veil, wavy in the wind, alone in the street. An oasis. She is Woman, with no applicable variables. In absolute value. For the eyes of men, they are all alike, except those few he knows.
We all enjoy stereotypes. They make society easier, especially for those who don’t enjoy society too much. That way we hurt people, rather unfairly.
For women, many things depend on when they fall in love. The subconscious reasons that made us fall in love with a man. It can happen more than once, each time will be different. Generally, we can’t control it. It is a little like dreaming and having bad dreams. The subconscious factor is controlling.
Symbols are in charge of most of our perception, they affect our mood. They are different for everyone. Some are collective, to the point of creating a culture.
A man is a symbol for a woman, as much as a woman for a man. A man in absolute value, with no variables applicable. What is he? A tower? A shelter? A pet? A father? A teacher? A zoologist would say that human females evolved into their current role, because of child bearing and all its consequences on our symbolic baggage. In the beginning there was the house, the male hunter and the female. She had no job definition, she came with a tool kit for certain things that had to be done. That was the birth of society. For women, men were the suppliers. The meaning of the role of supplier is ever changing. Some women expect men to give them everything, to provide even for the most basic needs. Others expect good conversation. Since rather recently, historically speaking, women want good sex, the social equivalent to the animal’s attraction towards healthy males. Every need may fall into the supplier’s duty. If the male fails to supply (money, sex, comfort, company, etc.) it is cause for break up. Men generally are unaware of what women want. The solution is for women to find out, and for men, patiently aid to do so. Two heads think better than one.
The amount of drama we apply to our life, also depends on our symbols. Guilt has a big role to play, as does selfishness. The very language we use to build our thoughts, affects them. It seems sometimes like a matter of décor. Some women may be over controlling. That is a sign of a weak set of self bestowed values, a weak shield.
As long as male provide, women are soothed. Socially, we feel no pressure. We will not be questioned by an invisible social judge on the decisions our heart’s impulses made.
Pressure of any kind will smother any life form. Company sets us free, on a communicational level. The ability to share our perception is priceless on an evolutionary level.
When we don’t stereotype, we use symbols to give explanations to events or people. We mix them to create something else. Life fills us with symbols, daily. Some people call them signs, life telling them what is happening, or going to happen. Some use them as inspiration, they seek the bottom of them through they craft. The second one is wiser.
Sometimes, evolution feels too fast. Then, we can only trust. When symbols change suddenly, when our dreams seem to mutate far away from the original path, it is best to accept it. Our control over our own lives is very limited, though possible.
As human evolves, so does perspective, so do symbols. When our dreams change, we tend to look back. It’s healthy to do so. What we were was no more controllable that what we will become in the future. There is only the path we tread through time, the lines we draw in the universe.
