Monday, March 28, 2011

Do soul mates really exist?


If time is infinite, do you really want some people to be there for all of it?
Someone once asked me that very same question and I told her, because she asked me on a Tuesday, that I am going to give her my cynical answer and that would be, no I don’t.


We are human beings, which means we are gregarious by nature
We love the company of others and we are wary of loners. We rightfully think that people who enjoy isolation are weird, that they have a large knife collection at home, will one day snap, come to work and shoot their co-workers in the face.
From an early age we have an inborn urge to meet people and socialise. Whether this is to make sure our species survives, or because loneliness is one of our top 10 fears, who knows?


But there is just too much randomness
You don’t even have to be a subscriber to the multiple worlds theory to know that our one universe is vast enough. It’s hard not to think that people just hook up randomly, release chemicals to mask the other person’s flaws and then try to make the best of it.


Sure, we all have an idea in our head of what our perfect match should be like one day, but unfortunately we are an impatient bunch
Even when people have nothing more in common than the two hands and feet they were born with, they will still hook up and then wonder years later why they can’t stand each other anymore.
It has just been Valentine’s Day; women all over the world were spoiled with fake smiles, clichés and hidden agendas, all while men silently refer to this day as a money-making scheme invented by bored land-stealing communists.
Surely that is not how it should be; people meant for each other should be spoiled because it is Wednesday, or because the wind blew funny, not because Johnny Marketing Company said so.


What exactly is a soul mate anyway?
I know what you are thinking; most people you meet don’t even have a soul to begin with, so how can it be defined?
Dante’s Inferno is a poem written in the 14th century about a man called Dante Alighieri who goes into hell to save the love of his life, Beatrice’s soul. He battles through the nine gates of hell, with just the hope of seeing her again driving him forth. Most people I know won’t even open the garden gate for their lover, never mind the nine gates of hell.
Plato, a Greek philosopher, wrote a story called The Symposium, in which he describes how humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them.
It does sound like he was indeed smoking his sandals when he wrote that, but what it shows is that even in ancient times philosophers thought of us as incomplete or lacking in some way. Is that what defines a soul mate, someone who is willing to sacrifice their own soul, or someone who completes yours?



It is not always black or white
I have to admit, it is one of the hardest questions to answer, because on some fairytale romantic level we are probably all looking for that one special person, but what are the odds of actually finding them?
Maybe they are out there and if you are extremely lucky you do end up together. Maybe we do meet them, but because of all the things I said above they are not always available the way we would like them to be.
All I know is that human relationships are very fickle, be they romantic or otherwise. It can take years to forge trust, love and respect, but a brief moment can break the bonds forever. People come and go in our lives like fashion trends. Make sure your own soul is worthy of being someone’s mate first and who knows, maybe the rest will follow.

Do soul mates really exist?


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