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At the beginning you do not know for sure that dreams are really dreams.

Charleroi Danses

“Make haste slowly” is an oxymoron attributed to the Roman Emperor Augustus, represented by a dolphin entwined with an anchor. Agility and dexterity together with security and stability.

This image is useful to us for introducing the theme of the female midlife in the 21^st century. At a stage of life when many cycles have been completed and others are calling, the woman at fifty is both the anchor and the dolphin. And she moves within the complementarity of these two images and their respective stages.

In Six Memos for the Next Millennium, writer Italo Calvino tells us a Chinese story to illustrate the subjectivity and relativity of these two stages.

Among the multiple virtues of Chuang Tzu was the ability to draw. The King asked him to draw a crab. Chuang Tzu said that in order to draw it he would need 5 years and a house with 12 servants. After 5 years had passed he had not even started the drawing. “I need another five years”, said Chuang Tzu. The King agreed. When the tenth year ended, Chuang Tzu took the brush and, in an instant, with one single stroke, drew a crab, the most perfect crab that anyone had ever seen.