Is There Such a Thing as Soul Mates?
According to Urban Dictionary, your soulmate is irreplaceable. Your soulmate can find your soul in the universe even if it’s light years away, or in another life form. Every soul has a soulmate that offers “powerful love energy” and receives the same in return.
So what is a soul, anyway? After a series of Google searches, I’ve determined the best way to summarize the human soul is that it’s the part of a person that is not physical — it is the part of every human being that lasts eternally after the body experiences death.
What Google couldn’t tell me, however, is whether this concept is real. Is there one soul out there predestined to be with yours? If you’re single, is your soul longing to be on “Plenty of Souls” to find it’s perfect, predetermined match?
I’m going to go ahead and play devil’s advocate and say, “eh, probably not.”
While the thought of finding one’s soulmate is “nice,” and I wouldn’t necessarily scoff at the idea of my soul floating around the universe with its counter-soul going on dates at the newest soul food restaurant — it doesn’t seem particularly plausible.
I do think my physical form, traits, and even soul—if it exists — are better suited for other physical life forms and souls than for other ones, but I believe there are factors at play here that are in no way related to destiny.
For example, say someone’s body (and soul) gets a job in one part of the country after debating another job offer on the opposite coast. They meet the love of their life. They bombard people on Facebook incessantly—flaunting their eternal bliss — until they eventually get married, have kids, and post their child’s every waking bowel movement. Life is good, and they are none-the-wiser that many of their friends unfollowed them ages ago. So, does this mean that this person’s choice to pick one location over the other was predestined because that’s where they ended up finding their beloved?
Not to burst a figurative “rom-com-esque” bubble, but I don’t think so. I believe that person probably would have found “the love of their life” at job option/location #2, had they chosen that path, because that is the place they would have been seeking their significant other.
It’s really as simple as this: you make decisions that then affect other aspects of your life. You meet someone at work because that happens to be where you spend eight ever-so-fulfilling hours a day and boom — your soul is no longer on “Soul Tinder” wondering why all the suitable souls are already taken. Chance (you happen to come across someone you click with), compatibility (you happen to not want to strangle that person), and the willingness to work through rough patches (no union is perfect, despite what your friends on Facebook want you to believe) all lead to happy relationships. Fate, on the other hand, does not.
Relating this to the TV show Friends, as I do for most things, there’s an episode in which Phoebe starts dating a man she believes to be Monica’s soulmate — “Don.” Don is introduced to Monica and her husband Chandler. Don declares he hates sun-dried tomatoes in his charming British accent. Monica agrees. Don says his favorite restaurant is the one where Monica happens to be the head chef, and eventually they gush over the fact they’d both gladly live in a house made of cheese. They hit it off famously… to Chandler’s dismay. Phoebe asks Chandler what the big deal is because he “doesn’t even believe in soulmates anyway.” He snaps back, “I believe in tall, handsome strangers that hit on my wife!”
Later in the evening Chandler confronts Monica about Phoebe’s claim that Don is her soulmate and whines that therefor he “must not be perfect for her… just good enough.” Monica eases his concerns by saying she doesn’t believe in soulmates either —that she doesn’t think they were predestined to be together. Instead she believes they fell in love, and work hard at their relationship (“somedays we work really hard!”) and that is what makes it work.
Despite that there’s an episode earlier in the season where the pair does refer to the other as their “soulmate” when exchanging vows (one of the many oversights by the Friends writers), I wholeheartedly agree with Monica’s sentiment about falling in love and working hard at a relationship being the real key.
A willingness to persevere when things get tough is what’s going to keep the bond strong — people don’t stay together simply because the universe wills it to be — it’s not that easy, and that’s okay. We all like a challenge. Seek someone you’re willing to fight for, and you’ll realize that you’ve had the ability to control your destiny all along.
