Through time in our life we come across moments in which we realize parts of the unmeasurable meaning of life and our persuit of happiness. I am not even in the middle of this journey and I don't expect to know the total real meaning of life but I have paid close attention to the different stages of my life. Lately I have stumbled in one of my stages and I had the furtune to discuss about it with a preofessional, a psycologyst who just was willing to listen and allow me to dive into the unknown that is my subconscense.
In those moments I was able to step out of my normal self and take quick peeks at the bigger picture of my life.
I already mentioned about stages in life and I have been able to classify a few of them and relate them to one another. Little did I know that I had just discovered a hint of what the essence of a life in persuit of happiness probably is afterall.

Them, Me, S.O., Us, Them

There are the five stages that I have so far identified and I'll explain them briefly here and look at them in a later moment.
Them (the first one) identifies those that where around us in the first stages of our life, most commonly our parents but it could be anyone else who was responsible for you or acted as a mother/father figure.
Me identifies the stage in our youth where we start developing our character which then starts interacting with everyone and everything around us.
S.O. (Significant Other) identifies the person early in our life for whom we started feeling love for and the person that has introduced us to the meaning of couple, friends, group.
Us identifies the moment in which a unity is created between to people, that care and love for one another and chose to persue happiness together.
Them (the last one) identifies the miracle that are children and the stage of interaction with the children in their Them, Me, S.O. stages.

Clearly there are other stages that follow but my young life hasn't crossed those bridges. I can already identify a few of them, like the stage in which you separate from the children to allow them to persuit their own happiness, the stage in which you find to take care of your relatives, the stage in which you start dealing with losses and others I cannot foresee as of yet.
One thing did suprise me, and it was how important is one phase for next one. You can already see it yourself. If you didn't have a good relationship with your parents, most likely the building of your character was niched here and there and more difficult to complete. Also if you didn't have a good idea of who you where and had a good relationship with yourself then identifying those same treat in the S.O. could have been extremely difficult, ending up in choosing someone that was not really compatible with you. For the same reason you can see how important it is that both Me and S.O. have to be defined and complete for a union between the two to be successfull. And lastly how important it is to have a strong union to face a child of your own in the most delicate phases of his/her life.

One can only talk by experience and I only have mine to speak of. Through friends and family members and their willingness to share their life, I've also seen snapshots of other lifes. The intersting thing about this opportunity was to realize how the changes in society have dramatically (in some cases) changed the sinergy of the stages and modified them as well. Just by looking at the initial stage, Them, that coincedes witht he last stage for the parents. Society has allowed more and more for families to be represented by only one parent or by 2 mothers or 2 fathers and so on. Some children don't even have parents, which leaves them completly disarmed and hopeless while trying to build their Me.

More to follow

Daren