Caira’s story represents the world of adolescents. At this age we develop our worlds and our houses, which are nothing but ideas we have about ourselves. During this period all the things we’ve put into this world find their place. The period of discovering our own personality and rebelling against external influences leaves a mark on our way of thinking for the rest of our lives; it’s now that the power ratio of our three minds is established and our character is shaped forever. To our world, puberty represents rivalry between the minds, discovering the truth about oneself, and consequently confusion, which lasts until everything finds its own place. And this is precisely what Caira’s story is also like.

It’s no coincidence that a girl who grew up in an almost perfect family has been selected to illustrate growing up. The father and mother, who are connected by true love, can be more than just a model to their kids. They dedicate a great deal of attention and love to them, and try to help and support them. Even though one could hardly imagine more perfect parents than these, growing up in this family isn’t without problems.

The story begins with Eros, who finds himself outdoors, in pristine nature, where he comes across a river, which is a metaphor for Life. The fledglings—young birds capable of flying—that have already left their nest are another metaphor. In order for Eros to continue his journey, he has to leave the riverbank he ended up on—this is the world of Caira’s parents, a world Caira also lived in until only recently. Eros sets his mirror and book on a rock by the pool—in this story, coincidence leaves them to Caira’s parents.

However, the river has another symbolic meaning—it also represents an important step in growing up, the moment when the child leaves his parents’ world and creates his own world. One day every child crosses over to the opposite bank one way or another because this other bank represents his own world. The main thing here is how someone crosses the river. Only a few parents are aware of this inevitable fact and help their child build a safe boat in which he can face life without major problems. To most parents, life seems risky and, because they forget that they themselves also crossed the river once, they want to protect their child from this danger. They want to keep him on their bank at all costs and so they make sure he doesn’t step too far out into the river or even forbid him to spend time near the river at all. Because of this, these children must swim across the river and life carries them the farthest away from their parents’ world, just like the river carried Eros away. However, life can also be fatal and this is especially true for the children of parents who are most afraid that their child will cross the river one day. For these children, the river may even be more fatal than for the children of parents who don’t care much about their children and leave them at the mercy of Life from the very first day.

Coincidentally, Eros finds himself on the opposite bank, where he comes across a construction site. Close to the house that’s being built are also both parents’ houses. Nevertheless, these aren’t Caira’s parents’ real houses; these two houses are only the illusory notions that the girl brought with her from the old world, from the time when she was still able to see her parents’ real world, as only children can. When we cross the river, we find ourselves in our own worlds for the first time in our lives. Because everyone we know is also there, we don’t even notice this important change that we’ve gone through. This change represents the formation of our own world and, at the same time, the ultimate loss of the ability to see other worlds. Here the reader mustn’t forget that Eros himself also had to leave his world to be able to enter the world of all thoughts and the various worlds of others.

Caira’s workers have their own distinct ways of thinking. Anyone who pays enough attention to the presentation of the three minds will recognize which of Caira’s workers embody which minds from the conversation going on between them.

Caira’s father wants to help her create her own world and with this he unintentionally causes it to become more and more like his own. He doesn’t realize that every person has his own unique world because, like everyone else, he also knows, sees, and understands only his own world.

The mother, unlike the father, doesn’t interfere with the creation of her daughter’s new world, which is why she has fewer problems in her relationship with her daughter later on. However, she’s also unaware of her influence, which is no less significant than the father’s. This influence is visible in some of the things she finds significant, such building the balconies. The mother only wants to protect Caira from the disappointment of not receiving the building permit for the balconies yet. However, she’s not aware of the fact that merely by paying attention to this subject she may be creating a problem in her daughter’s world that otherwise wouldn’t even be there.

Early on, some parents try to help their children realize that money isn’t the most important thing in life and that it doesn’t bring happiness. This may be true, but how can a child believe his parents when they so eagerly repeat and even stress this, and always when they’re around someone who they themselves perhaps bitterly resent for being financially more successful than they are. It’s part of human nature to pay attention to the important things and not to the unimportant ones, and every child starts to realize this quite early on.

Every reader has probably figured out that the balconies are a metaphor for female breasts and the building permit is a metaphor for the inherited genetic code or natural predisposition that determines when they’ll develop and to what extent. Illegal construction of balconies stands for surgical alteration of the shape of breasts and is a sign of not accepting oneself. A cosmetic procedure changes one’s body shape but it doesn’t change one’s view of his own world, which is why people who decide to have cosmetic procedures soon need new ones because they wrongly continue to believe that the procedures can make them accept themselves. Cosmetic procedures don’t bring this about; they only continue to introduce new stage sets, which increasingly disguise the truth of people’s worlds.

In adolescents, any dissatisfaction with oneself can be a reason for not accepting oneself. However, the existence of the reason for dissatisfaction has a role no larger than the value of the meaning they attribute to it. This value of the meaning is generally attributed to things by the people close to the adolescent.

The most that parents can provide for their children when they’re growing up is to help them accept themselves. Anyone who succeeds in doing this provides their children with the best thing in life—the key to their happiness. These children are resistant to almost all negative external influences because they can think for themselves. Parents who don’t accept themselves find this to be a much harder task.

For the first time Caira will celebrate her thirteenth birthday in the new house, in her own world. Parents often don’t understand this important change in their children because they only know their own world. They see everything as it was before, but in the child’s world everything changes when he crosses the river. At the same time, day by day the child finds his parents more peculiar and this is because he doesn’t realize that he can no longer see his parents’ real worlds. This is the reason for their mutual alienation. If parents don’t recognize their role in this process, they often achieve exactly the opposite of what they hope to achieve. Parents of growing adolescents should think hard about the following sentence: “We’ve given him everything and he’s treating us so ungratefully!” Even if you haven’t said this aloud, it’s a big enough problem if you’ve only felt it. It’s natural that parents only want the best for their children, but the problem arises if they don’t realize that every person needs his own world and that the same is true for their child, a growing person. Parents who don’t accept themselves have the most problems with this because they’ve found their own perfected worlds in their children, because in their early childhood children copied the worlds of their parents into their own. These parents now absolutely can’t accept that their child wants a different world, which is why they perceive this as their child’s rejection of their world. This is especially painful for them because now for the very first time they can finally accept their own world with the help of their child—that is, the world they now see in their child. Since the births of their children, parents like these have tried to perfect their world through their children. Just like they’ve been perfecting their stage sets all of their lives, now they try to make their children’s truth the same as their stage sets. By doing this, they cause precisely the opposite of what they wish for to happen—instead of the truth, they unintentionally force their stage sets on their children and that’s why these children’s problems become similar to their parents’ problems.

Caira’s father accepts himself, but he isn’t aware of how strongly he also wants to transfer the values that work only in his world over to his daughter’s world. You should pay attention to the change that happens in the parent-child relationships of parents who don’t accept themselves in the story about Malek in the ninth world. His daughter Nina goes to the same school as Caira’s sister Zara.

Caira’s birthday party is an example of the destructive influence of peers on the unprepared maturing adolescent. Adolescents usually don’t accept themselves during this period, which is why they mercilessly act out on others by humiliating them and making fun of their newly built houses. Especially children who aren’t happy with their own new houses do this (as do adults who don’t accept themselves). Each such attack strongly influences the adolescent, and it’s the responses of his three minds in this period that most strongly define the power ratio between them. It’s all about the response that will meet the common goal to the greatest extent. The final power ratio between them is nothing but the response to the sum of all external influences in early childhood and adolescence. The ratio that works best in this early stage defines the child’s character forever.

Parents are aware of the influence of the environment, which is why they try to protect their children by choosing his friends and limiting his social activities around potentially harmful company. However, the problem is that parents can’t protect their children all their lives and, by trying to protect them from environmental influences even in their youth, they’re only making their relationships a lot more difficult later on, or even throughout his whole life. The best thing parents can do for their children is to also let them socialize with those peers who may at first even cause some damage to their newly emerging houses; and then help them take care of the problem themselves because this is the only way that children will know how to choose their friends the next time and make sure that socializing with others won’t harm them. Children are much faster learners than parents are usually willing to give them credit for. Also, relationships between peers are in no way different than the relationships between parents and their children. Parents who excessively care for their children, bathe them, disinfect them, and take them to the doctor for prescriptions for powerful medications even when they only have an ordinary cold, will weaken their children’s natural defense mechanism for their entire life, and illnesses such as allergies, asthma, and other hypersensitivities will be a constant part of their lives. We shouldn’t forget about our evolution over millions of years when we grew up in dirt and were exposed to numerous harmful influences, and we nonetheless survived. And our bodies are still well equipped for all of this because any change in the genetic code requires much more time than has passed since we were still healthy, resistant children, playing carefree on a dirty floor. We can immediately find proof of this by comparing the health of children who have overly attentive and hygienic parents and the health of children whose parents couldn’t care less about cleanliness, as was the case during the last few million years of human evolution.

However, one of the minds surprisingly likes the hypersensitivity of the immune system; with its way of thinking, Reason can overcome even the natural lack of immunity because it can develop medications for diseases. This is why society is becoming more and more dependent on the power of this mind. Accordingly, Instinct is becoming extremely subordinate to Reason because its way of thinking is prone to fears of possible dangers—and also the fear of diseases.

The reader should pay attention to how Caira’s workers behave during the birthday party. They act differently because each of them has their own character, their own ways of thinking, and their own values and world views. Tin has the most trouble fitting in, George not as much, and Rem enjoys himself immensely and isn’t at all concerned about the damage that’s being done. Also, in contrast to George and Tin, Rem also gets along splendidly with the father and supports his ideas concerning the construction of Caira’s house. This brings Tin and George even closer together and, if Caira wants a house that isn’t like her father’s, she’ll also have to listen to George’s plan and Tin’s fears.

All parents should know that an adolescent’s desire to have his own unique world and house is the most natural thing in the world. Also, creating a world according to one’s own ideas and not according to those of someone else forms the basis for accepting yourself later on. By forcing their worlds on their children, parents often prevent them from being able to accept and love themselves later in life.

The power struggle between the minds during adolescence is also the reason why teenagers are often tired, irritable, have no life energy, and frequently show similar signs to people suffering from depression. This is nothing more than the outcome of the problems the minds have with each other during this period. When the power ratio is established, the minds usually come to terms with their roles and adolescent troubles go away as simply as they appeared. It’s also interesting that on their way to adulthood adolescents discover things, activities, idols, and so on that in their heads declare a truce between the minds, which is why these things attract them so much that they practically live only for them for a while. If we take a closer look at what teenagers are devoted to, we’ll see that it’s always something that’s connected with the origin of the conflict between their minds. Parents who force their worlds on their children shouldn’t be surprised if their children are most happy with what their parents wanted for them the least, or what they even tried to prevent them from liking. This is actually the children’s answer to the overly great similarity between their houses and their parents’ houses, a similarity that they now urgently have to abolish.

Due to the rising power of Instinct in Caira’s life, her character soon begins changing. This is most evident from the description of the beginning of the new school year. Even though she’s never worried about others talking about her behind her back, this time at the classroom door she feels like everyone’s staring at her, precisely because of her birthday party. However, this isn’t really what’s happening because the children forgot about Caira’s birthday long ago. Nevertheless, Instinct’s power changes human perceptions. Without even being aware of this, people see, understand, and comprehend other people and events completely differently than those who look through Reason’ and Emotion’ eyes. Due to Instinct’s predominance, they believe in his truth and accordingly their behavior also changes.

Nevertheless, Instinct isn’t just pessimistic, but creative too. Because he also easily creates unusual relations, his responses are often humorous. Caira’s teacher is offended by Caira’s humorous response; she’s a member of the current school system, which represents the world of Reason, which isn’t in favor of this way of thinking, and so she gives Caira a failing grade. Here we come across the main problem of the school system. It’s designed in such a way that it suppresses the thinking, values, and abilities of Instinct and Emotion and praises Reason; in this way it enables people with the mind of Reason to have the least problems climbing the social ladder. This enables him to have absolute predominance in our society.

Caira rejects her father’s world, which means that she also starts rejecting everything that has anything to do with this world. She also rejects her beloved sister and now doesn’t want to be seen anywhere near her. This illustrates how powerful the desire to have one’s own world is and how this makes it difficult to understand a maturing adolescent.

Caira finally gets breasts and the importance her family ascribes to this makes her believe that this is something really important. Only Eros is against ascribing such a great deal of importance to the building permit, but this time he’s drowned out by others. People who during their teen years ascribe great importance to things that are less important because of the influence of the environment are creating canvases on which they’ll paint their stage sets later on. If a person can’t accept himself he starts looking for reasons for this, and then completely unimportant things that society regards as important become the reason for concealing the truth of one’s own world. For example, a woman who doesn’t accept herself but wants others to recognize her attractiveness will suddenly think that the size of her breasts could strongly influence whether or not others find her attractive.

The father’s patio is a metaphor for his penis. When his daughter started becoming a woman he became somewhat jealous. He hasn’t forgotten his teenage years yet and how boys think when they’re full of hormones.

Even though attentive readers will have understood the book’s structure by now, it’s nevertheless necessary to draw additional attention to some details in the behavior of Caira’s assistants, her three minds. George is Reason, Rem is Emotion, and Tin is Instinct. Even the last two letters in Rem’s and Tin’s names reveal which minds they are connected to, while George’s do not. But this is no coincidence. George was actually the name of an imaginary friend of a girl who served as the basis for Caira’s story—she hung out with him, talked to him, and played with him for several years as a child until one day he mysteriously disappeared forever. It’s not uncommon for children to have imaginary friends and their parents should pay attention to this because the qualities of this figure resemble the character of the mind the child gets particularly close to during this period.

In the world of thoughts Eros finds himself in, Caira is actually the girl’s Ego and he actually doesn’t have his own way of thinking. All Caira’s reflections, views, beliefs, perceptions, and all her values come exclusively from George, Rem, and Tin. Even though in the story Caira equally participates in the conversations with others, her words actually reflect the thoughts of the one of her assistants she trusts the most at a given moment. Her temporary trust in one of her assistants is nothing but the result of her three minds adapting their way of thinking to what’s going on because Ego is only a concept created by Life.

Until the desire to independently design her own house matures in Caira, Rem is very successful in her world because he gets along splendidly with her father, who’s also ruled by Emotion. Only when all three minds start wanting an independent world and a unique house does this start to push her friend Rem—that is, the mind Emotion—more and more into the background. Because Instinct and Reason recognize the danger in her father that they will be prevented to build a house according to their own ideas, this gives them the power to rise above Caira’s Emotion. In the story, Rem keeps defending her father’s viewpoints and actions. He doesn’t perceive any threat in her father because they have the same way of thinking and thus the same views; but he misses the time when her father was the only role model in the girl’s world.

Even though Caira’s three friends constantly think like the minds they represent, on page 235 Rem points out to Caira that she was displaying bad etiquette. Etiquette is nothing but one of Reason’s inventions because it’s about following set rules of behavior. Of course, this is why Rem (Emotion) can’t identify himself with etiquette, which seems like an inconsistency, but here the talk of etiquette isn’t a coincidence. As personified Emotion, Rem only mentions etiquette to show that at this moment George’s (that is, Reason’s) way of thinking in the relationship towards the father even contradicts the values George generally stands for.

Parents often want to force their worlds on their children by turning their noses up at their different views when they try to resist this. At these moments parents make mocking remarks, which don’t seem significant to them, but stay in the minds of adolescents and later on cause all the contradictions and defiance that often greatly surprises the parents because they’ve forgotten that they were the ones that caused these in the first place. The father turns his nose up at Caira’s idea of a terrace on top of the roof and he offends her with the observation that the terrace will look like the funeral of an important head of state. This insignificant observation makes Caira develop her enthusiasm for communism later on in her world, even though she doesn’t even know, let alone understand, this system of rule. The three statues of statesmen that the girl becomes enraptured with without ever hearing about them before symbolize her rebellion against her father, and it’s this defiance that’s more important than her enthusiasm for political views and national leaders.

Her father helps Caira seal the terrace and completely overlooks the purpose of the hole that George planned to be used as a drain. The father and Rem plug the drain, which causes a flood in the house. At first, the father doesn’t realize this was his fault and even reproaches Caira for not listening to him when she should have because he has more experience with roofs than she does. The story teaches us that we all make mistakes and that it’s more important that we learn something from them than to not make them at all. For this exact reason, children have to learn from their mistakes because this is the only way that they’ll be able to perfect their world and build a sturdy house that they’ll be happy with.

Life also teaches us that we have to work for our own benefit as well as for the benefit of others. This means that we mustn’t think selfishly. Even parents who are very giving toward their children may be selfish and not even realize it. Only people who give without expectations actually give unselfishly. This is exactly the reason for this wisdom: “That which you received from us, you owe your own children, not us. And you don’t have the right to expect anything from your children because they don’t owe you anything.”

This realization is extremely important for the relationship between parents and children, but very few people actually understand and follow this principle. The problem here is also concealed selfishness, giving with hidden intentions, which the parents are often unaware of in such cases. It’s not uncommon for parents to build such large houses that there’s enough space for their children to live in them with their families. Even though the parents sacrifice themselves and build it with the purpose of making things easier for their children, this is nothing but selfishness or concealed selfishness because by doing this what they actually want above all was for their children to stay near them and provide them with security in their old age. Such parents expect gratitude from their children, and when they move out they’re deeply disappointed and hurt. Because they can’t accept their children’s decisions, they most often blame their partners, whom they now see as enemies in disguise. If parents want to live close to their children when they grow old, the best thing to do to make sure this happens is to unselfishly take care of their own parents when they grow old. Taking care of parents because we’re expecting to inherit from them is also selfish! On the other hand, if parents selfishly refuse to leave their children an inheritance, in their next lives they risk being born to their own descendants in economically more difficult circumstances. Many parents who in their own worlds plan for their children to take care of them when they’re old will realize the meaning of the saying: “Man plans, Life laughs.”

Caira throws a party and invites everyone important. However, overly praising respectable members of the community, just like denigrating their value, is a sign of not accepting oneself. The desire to please important people and socialize with them comes from the sense of one’s own inferiority. Like others, Caira believes that if she’s accepted into high society she’ll find a way to accept her own world. However, people don’t gain self-confidence because their worlds are perfect, but because they accept the differences between worlds.

Eros offers a girl at the party a simple lemonade instead of the alcoholic beverage she wanted. Because he isn’t worried about what she will think of this, everything turns out well. Caira realizes that it’s much better to think with her own head than to foolishly do things that others do, even though this may mean that they won’t accept her into their company. Caira refuses the cigarette she’s been offered. This is the sign that she’s understood Eros’s message.

When Caira attempts to sneak in a bottle of alcohol from her grandma’s cupboard, her father reaches his limit. Actually, he’s been giving in to his daughter this whole time because he was hoping to ease the tension in their relationship. Now he’s become afraid that things have gotten out of hand, which is why he decides to show Caira where the limits are. He wants to protect her from danger. However, Caira understands his reaction differently; she thinks he’s only forcing his own values on her again and she firmly fights back.

Her father, who’s doing his best to be caring but also understanding, is deeply hurt by the message on the facade of his house. He’s done the best he could, but still finds himself exactly where he’d always hoped he never would—his daughter hates him. He can’t accept this.

During the hospital visit, a detail is revealed that hasn’t been evident from Caira’s world until now and demonstrates her father’s true wisdom and greatness: Zara mentions that she’s being teased at school because her father’s believed to be really rich. This is true and her classmates are, of course, jealous because their parents, who don’t accept themselves and envy Zara’s father, gave them parts of their worlds. Her father’s extremely successful and because of this also a wealthy businessman who doesn’t put much weight on their financial situation in raising his daughters. Thus, the worlds that Caira and Zara have built for themselves aren’t at all burdened with material values. Only this way was he able to ensure that they’d never live in the shadow of his success. This also shows that the father accepts his own world, which is the condition for being able to find true love with his wife and the two of them being able to raise their children almost perfectly.

In the hospital room, Eros is sitting on the nightstand next to the father’s head, but in fact only the book in which Eros lives is there. Later on we’ll see a few more times that Eros ends up in people’s worlds through the book they’re reading.

Eros reveals to the father how to give children what they need to be happy in life. The key to bringing children up well is in the balanced ratio of expectations, praise, and punishment. This indicates the problem of the entire society because our future depends on how we bring up our children. In the conversation between Eros and the father, we come across a very important piece of information that reveals how to develop a society that’s ruled by love. Parents who don’t accept themselves often give their children more than is good for them and at the same time expect less from them than is necessary. What they’re doing is raising dependent people who won’t know how to take care of themselves in life, much less others, and will be unhappy because of this; they’ll always want what they can’t have and will never really be happy with anything. A society made up of such people is the first step towards the collapse of a civilization.

The general with the one-story house is Napoleon Bonaparte. The one who had only one walnut planted by his veranda is Adolf Hitler because it’s known that he only had one testicle.

When the father returns home, Eros surprises him with the newly painted house. He likes the new color, but this change makes him feel uneasy. With this Eros has made him realize that it’s unacceptable to force your own views on other worlds even if this is done with the best of intentions.

The horse dropping Caira’s father steps on is Lictor’s, which shows that Ares is on Eros’ trail again.