Written by Nandini Sethi
A friend recently asked me “do you believe in soulmates?” And my reflex response was ‘yes!’ But to appear thoughtful and intellectual, I told her I wasn’t sure.
The question got me thinking about love and what we have come to know of it today. I decided to read up on the subject and do some light research to support or disprove the claim of ‘everyone has a soulmate.’
Everywhere I went, every article I read only suggested one thing – that scientifically, the concept of soulmates can’t exist. And every time I read logical reasoning for why soulmates aren’t fathomable, I dismissed it as a mere opinion. Even though I thought I had no emotional attachment to the topic, I didn’t want to believe the truth. So, I looked for a thought or an opinion that matched mine (kind of like everyone does for their political affiliations.)
There is a Greek legend that suggests that humans were originally created with two heads and two pairs of limbs. Fearing the power of a mere human, the Greek God Zeus split them into two halves, condemning them to live the rest of their lives in search of their significant half.
These creatures were doomed to spend their time in misery and loneliness, writhing in pain, waiting for their demise. Apollo, the Greek God healing and light, took great sympathy upon the low-lying creatures and reconstituted their bodies so that we became humans with a single face and two pairs of limbs. While the physical bodies came to be singular, humans continued to long for their other half, continue to long for their missing soul. Humans would continue to feel a void and desire to be complete again with the physical nature of the other sex, and when the souls would unite again, they would once again be whole, with their soulmate.
The understanding was that when the two lost souls find each other, there will be a reconnect, on a spiritual level, and they will live together in joy and unison, and there was no greater blessing than that.
Why is it that I choose to believe in myths and folklore over science and facts? Maybe it’s easier to believe in the fact that there is someone out there for me than dreading the void of living a lonely life forever. Why is it that I believe in the idea that your soulmate can exist anywhere in the world, a whole other continent away, and not the suggested reality that your ideal partner is dependent on geographical proximity? Why is it so hard?
Maybe the truth is that I’m just a hopeless romantic like millions of other people in this world. Maybe my soulmate is one among those millions.
