Meaning of the half orange
If we were to ask the following question: what does it mean to be in love? Surely we could find as many answers as there are individuals on this planet. But surely many of them would also agree on some substantial issues, such as being in love means finding a person who understands us, who is about sharing life with someone who takes care of us, with whom we grow old, who loves us, who respects us and make us happy.
Even when our meaning of love is based on difference or similarity, that is, that person who has or is everything that I am not, or, on the contrary, that person who is equal to me, in personality, thoughts, tastes, hobbies, for all or almost everyone, falling in love is to find or find THAT person, is to search or find that “complement.” In short, as it is said colloquially, it is finding our “better half.”
The love expression of “half orange” has its origin in a myth narrated in Plato’s work called “The Banquet”, by a Greek comedy poet called Aristophanes. This poet told that in the origins the human race was almost perfect and resembled an orange, “all men had round shapes, the back, and sides placed in a circle, four arms, four legs, two physiognomies attached to a circular neck and perfectly similar, a single head, which brought together these two opposing countenance, two ears, two organs of the generation, and everything else in this same proportion. These beings could be of three kinds: one, composed of man and man, another, of woman and woman, and a third, of man and woman, called androgynous.
Aristophanes says that “the bodies were robust and vigorous and with a heart of heart, and that is why they conceived the daring idea of climbing the sky and fighting with the gods .” Such audacity provoked the wrath of Zeus, who decided to resubmit the human being and reduce his strength, he did so by dividing these beings into two by lightning. In this way, he made us incomplete beings, and each half began to make efforts to find the other half of the one that had been divided, “and when they were both, they hugged and joined, driven by the desire to enter their former unit, with ardor such that, embraced, they perished from hunger and inaction, not wanting to do anything without each other. ”
My “better half” … Myth or reality?
That myth is what gives meaning to the widespread expression of the “half orange”, but its validity is more related to the expression itself than to the content to which it refers. Although we still hope to find our better half in our day, we would not share that original idea of myth associated with sad wandering beings in search of their other half. Not even that vision of that encounter in terms of dependence and nostalgia, pain and suffering. And even less, the belief of feeling incomplete as individuals by the fact of not finding who to fall in love with, to the contrary, today we are more socialized in knowing ourselves a whole, whole, unique, that seeks another as whole as oneself, and that although surely it is not half, maybe if it is complement.
That myth may serve today to reinforce a characteristic of our race, which undoubtedly is not a myth but a reality, and that is neither more nor less than our need as human beings to find that person who also seeks us, and with which to share moments or an entire existence. Let us then look, or let ourselves be found by that companion or companion, complete and complex, to accompany us on this trip, with whom to challenge the myth itself, with whom to go against the current origin of the union as martyrdom or ordeal, but with the belief of the union as growth and happiness between two oranges … sorry, between two people.
