"So if you're afraid of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away but if you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from earth."
-Louis in Jacob's Ladder when Jacob says he's afraid
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As Aristophanes suggests in Plato's Symposium, since we are incarnated in this realm bound anatomically (usually) to one gender only, we tend to look outward to regain our lost wholeness. As social, gendered mammals this has a certain validity. But since we are also androgynous psyches or spirits, this validity is only one side of the paradox. Loving and bonding to others is a key part of our destiny, but we are not fully capable of this without a return to our inner wholeness. In the unfeminine squareness of the 1950s a man would stereotypically introduce his wife: "And here's the little woman, my better half." I never cease to be amazed at how revealing are the most seemingly simple of unconscious statements. The above introduction manages to be patronizingly undervaluing and sentimentally idealizing at the same time, as well as revealing the essential flaw in the relationship. Multiply two half-persons and you get a quarter not a whole.
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