Soul - Mates

........the single way love could explain itself to me!

“The whole of man’s life on the face of Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate.”

-BRIDA, PAULO COELHO*

Disclaimer: Unlike any other piece of my writing, this is a little polarized, a little too personal and a little too confident and hence I might be a little defensive about it. No generalization/stereotyping are intended. You might not agree with many things, and that’s fine, because we are all different and that’s the beauty of the universe. Obviously, we all need a little more maturity to understand people whose shoes we have not walked within.

I write this in complete light of the fact that I can be misinterpreted at multiple junctures…but that doesn’t really matter this time...perhaps because I am writing more for myself :)

With more than two decades of a single life, three Valentine’s days’ struggle and 24 pages of secondary research (and none of them used here!) makes me even less of an authority to write this piece…but love has enchanted me since forever….what can be such a force that gives people strength to die and kill, what kind of emotion is strong enough to last a lifetime, what can be so amazing that it can make you lose track of time, what can blind you so much that you never before knew what was missing? Hasn’t love touched each one of us, in some magnitude, in some form, in some way? Doesn’t that give us enough authority to talk about it….For me love has never been just the romance; it’s bigger for me, much bigger. I believe in soul-mates.

 Perhaps the whole concept of soul-mates is too far-fetched, too conventional for us to believe in it anymore, too clichéd to even travel to the modern world and old enough to have ended with fables…anyone who talks about them would be considered eccentric. However…..

6 years back I met someone who changed the way I knew life. 2 years back, I found a book that changed the way I knew soul-mates and….him.

So again, I believe in soul-mates.

 “When people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of Earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls come from?”

“The answer is simple,” said Wicca, after pausing to savor the young woman’s eager silence. “In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. Our souls divide as do crystals and stars, cells and plants.

“Our soul divides in two, and those new souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of Earth.”

“And does only one of those parts know who it is?” asked Brida.

 “The truth is that if the Anima mundi were merely to keep dividing, it would keep growing, but it would also become gradually weaker. That is why, as well as dividing into two, we also find ourselves. And that process of finding ourselves is called Love. That’s how the Book of Genesis explains it: the soul of Adam was split in two, and Eve was born out of him. In each life, we feel a mysterious obligation to find at least one of those Soul Mates.”

“But how will I know who my Soul Mate is?”

 “By taking risks,” she said to Brida. “By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.”

6 years back, I was an arrogant girl who hated the world for making it so hard for her. I was someone who had fought an attempt of child abuse by one of the teachers I had respected the most once. Life had been unjust, but that had never concerned me…It was just too hard upon me and I became too hard on it. The child in me had grown up so fast that I barely remember running after butterflies. I have never liked chocolates and soft toys. I never had a Barbie. I had grown to be a strong girl, but perhaps the strength had broken down the humane fragility in me. I didn’t believe in any worldly happiness by the time I hit senior school. I have struggled to accept the fact that I believed that any attempt at looking beautiful would make people mistake me for a “bad” girl. I carried myself shabbily and gracelessly to ensure that no one falls for me. I made sure that my cocoon is too hard, opaque and dark for people to find any positive light inside me. I had seen so many of my friends getting into hopeless relationships and losing themselves that love was not just scary, but also meaningless notion for me.

It was so easy for the guys who could never be misinterpreted. It was so much easier for beautiful girls who had guys lined up to help them with anything, for reasons unknown. I had worked so hard for achieving everything in life and convincing people that a below-average looking girl deserved all of that. I had already hypothesized that male chauvinism is to be fought at every step and beauty meant no brains. A satellite into space also could not raise my self-confidence. All of this and yet it took someone real strong to show that, I was not fighting the world, but just myself! Still, at every point, my need for acceptance was curbing my ability to be different.

“I want to know how to find my Soul Mate.” asked Brida.

“He’s right here with you,” thought the Magus, but again he said nothing.

“A point of light,” he said. “A point of light above the left shoulder of your Soul Mate”

1st day into graduation and I had seen a strange light in this person’s eyes. I ignored because all reasoning within a moment told me nothing like this is realistic. 2 years into graduation and I had earned myself good grades, and NOTHING ELSE! I didn’t have any memories to rejoice, too few friends and no reason to smile and then life showed me another trough, a big one. I saw pieces of me shattered around and was not even left with the courage to gather them. It felt nice to see someone with the same “light in the eyes” pick up all those pieces without an ounce of sympathy and in fact with confidence that these would make a stronger girl than before.

It felt nice to let go, to backtrack a little and find my childhood back. It felt nice to travel to unchartered territories for once without any fear…it’s wonderful how happier you become once you have lost so much that there is no more fear of losing anything. It felt nice to be touched without even a bit of lust, nice to see a smile that warmed my heart inside, however blue the situation might look like. It felt nice to have such a strong fall back option that I could let myself loose because now trust was not something I could bank upon, all I could, was get hurt again and that didn’t matter because there is absolutely nothing left after the absolute happens.

It felt nice to just watch the stars in pitch of the night, feel the breeze in my air and let all worries blow off. It felt nice to walk on dewy grass and derive energy listen to music that didn’t even exist. It was nice to again believe someone, even after knowing that it was so easy to break me, to know that trust could rise from ashes. It was heartening to know that I was the center of world for someone. Someone was there who would not think twice before prioritizing anything that concerns me. Someone who would leave off the world for one spark in my eyes, for one more smile on my face, someone to whom my happiness was the purpose….someone who just brought tears to my eyes….someone who was, is and will remain my MIRACLE! J

 For me, magic didn’t exist till the point I was shown that rains happen for us to dance our heart out, not to hide and cower….that painful songs only add to the pain, that sometimes it’s okay to overcome the pain and shut the door dance alone to a completely meaningless loud song….that  it was okay to bunk classes for once because the snacks at canteen were hot only in the second period!...that having roadside food was okay even if I got sick and missed a few classes…because in the end, I won’t remember that one class that I attended, but that one class that I missed…that sitting outside and letting the wind caress me would soothe me more than sitting in library…that looking at the world and smiling to strangers was all okay…that loving people without expectations was fine because love healed one from inside…that a broken trust is not my mistake…it’s a mistake on the part of the person breaking it…. that one becomes better with forgiveness….

Perhaps that was the end of the sad old me…but surely a beginning of happiness…that was when I started to enjoy moments rather than worrying for years, when I started being a little less attacking on people I didn’t trust, when I became more confident of myself, when I started  loving myself….that’s when I started living! J

This man transformed me…..and I felt the world transformed. They accepted me more for who I was because I was comfortable in my skin now! This man looked at me once and I knew he could see through my soul…he caressed my head and I knew things were going to be fine soon….he walked with me and I knew no journey would be difficult…he obviously loved me whole-heartedly and it took me way too long to see that love existed in so many forms and I could find him in every form of it…I could feel myself becoming a new him...capable of life, capable of love…he became everyone and everyone became him…he was omnipresent, he became my world…he loved me….but he never held me…truest of love is the kind that actually sets you free….

Love didn’t require that kind of renunciation. True love allowed each person to follow their own path, knowing that they would never lose touch with their Soul Mate.

Perhaps I was never able to name the relation because not ‘one’  relation was enough for the sentiment that held us together….no relation ever will be enough….these relations are at the level of soul and they don’t require any name, any mention…they just remain for life…and even after….there remains no need to try to hold it for the special feeling…any attempt at gathering and congregating it leads to a feeling of helplessness, of sand gushing through a hopelessly bound fist.…the beauty is in letting go…letting it flow…there might be no destination, no future to the relation…perhaps it’s not about the ending…it’s still about the story..

“People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of Love. Anyone who tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.”

Perhaps, words will never be able to explain the touch, the feel a soul-mate leaves on you…there is purely no romance involved, and yet so much of love, purely no attraction and yet so much of gravity, purely no benefits, no expectations and yet an amount of care that keeps you going forever….a love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days…

“Is it possible to meet more than one Soul Mate in each life?”

“Yes,” thought Wicca with certain bitterness. And when that happens, the heart is divided, and the result is pain and suffering.”

 “The essence of Creation is one and one alone,” she said. “And that essence is called Love. Love is the force that brings us back together, in order to condense the experience dispersed in many lives and many parts of the world. A Soul Mate is sure to cross our path. Even if it is only for a matter of moments, because those moments bring with them a Love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days.”

A soul-mate can be a teacher, a mother, a father, a brother, a friend, a stranger, a spouse, a granny….it just requires that person to make your eyes shine in any situation, someone who can make you feel safe when the whole world is crashing down…a person who can make you feel love in real terms…who touches you by never ever touching you....changes a part of you such that you never remain same…not any number of years will be enough with them, but even a moment with them earns a lifetime…Hope we all find ours… J

“Have you ever been in love with two men at once, Mum?” There was a defiant note in her voice, as if life had set its traps only for her.

  “When I got here, however, I met a man. He seemed a bit startled at first, but then he relaxed. He was an archaeologist and had been driving north—where some ruins had been found. He asked me about the village and the other villages nearby, about historic monuments.” Suddenly, all the problems I’d been grappling with disappeared as if by magic. I felt really useful and started telling him everything I knew, feeling that the many years I’d spent in the region at last had some meaning. That man sitting on the steps made me understand that I was important to the world and to the history of my country. I felt necessary, and that’s the best feeling a human being can have.

 “Before I knew it, the sun was low on the horizon, and never, in all my life, had time passed so quickly. I sensed that he felt the same. I could see in his eyes that he desired me. As if, suddenly, in the autumn of my life, when I thought I’d experienced everything.

I could experience, that man had appeared on the steps purely to show me that feelings—love, for example—do not grow old along with the body, but it’s a world where there’s no time, no space, no frontiers.”

“For many days, I wondered if that man really had existed, or if he was an angel sent by God to teach me the secret lessons of life. In the end, I decided that he had been a real man, a man who had loved me, even if only for an afternoon, and during that afternoon, he’d given me everything he had kept to himself throughout his whole life: his struggles, his joys, his difficulties, and his dreams. That afternoon I gave myself wholly as well—I was his companion, his wife, his audience, his lover. In a matter of only a few hours, I experienced the love of a lifetime.”

 “I’ve never stopped loving your father, not for a single day,” she concluded. “He’s always been by my side, doing his best, and I want to be with him until the end. But the heart’s a mysterious thing, and I still don’t really understand what happened that afternoon.

What I do know is that meeting that man left me feeling more confident, and showed me I was still capable of loving and being loved, and it taught me something else that I’ll never forget: finding one important thing in your life doesn’t mean you have to give up all the other important things.

“I still think of him sometimes. I’d like to know where he is, if he found what he was looking for that afternoon, if he’s still alive, or if God took his soul. I know he’ll never come back, which is why I could love him with such strength and such certainty, because I would never lose him; he had given himself to me entirely that afternoon.”

Who knows I might know soul-mates better when I grow older….who knows I might find more parts of my soul…who knows you might be crossing your soul-mate everyday and still can’t place them? Let yourself loose…who knows a soul-mate might have just knocked?

 “There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Because who knows? Forevers and infinities might actually exist…J

*Multiple anecdotes in this piece have been taken from Paulo Coelho's 'Brida', a wonderful book, very dear to me....with all due respect and credit to the great writer....Enjoy!