Fear not for the future, weep not for the past

I wonder how long it too Percy Bysshe Shelley to come up with that pearl of wisdom. Considering the personal tragedy that marred part of his life and his own untimely demise, I find the quote both fascinating and downright eerie. His ex-wife committed suicide, he lost custody of his children, and he supposedly met his own doppleganger before drowning in a storm while sailing. So it seems fitting that a man who had such a painful past and met a portent of his own death would encourage future readers to live only for the present. But is it really possible to completely separate ourselves from nervous wondering or nostalgia?

I find myself lately consumed with both the worry of the future and remembrances of the past. Sometimes it's the only remedy we have to escape the pain of the present. Here are some of the many questions that I've been pondering.

1) What the hell am I doing with my life? What will I do with my future? I've thought for a while that Law School was a sure thing for me. But lately I've been wondering if that really will make me happy. Harvard has a culture and atmosphere that is obsessed with success. If you're not interning with a banking firm this summer or already applying to med school (or grad school or law school, etc, etc) then you're wasting your time. And if you don't graduate and make tons of money, you're just a failure. After all, that's the definition of success, right? People focus constantly on things they should do, instead of things they want to do. I think that for many people at Harvard the pressure to live up to that expectation of success is probably the most stressful aspect of their lives. So how can we escape from worrying about the future when it's constantly insisted that we should?

Case in point: Someone just asked me, right this moment, on AIM if I've "Started looking into grad schools yet?" Honestly, it's Friday fucking night. Can anyone ever take a break from receiving or being under pressure?

2) I've thought a lot lately about love. I don't really know why aside from the fact that I've been single for close to 9 months. So my thoughts wonder to the notion of a "soul mate." Wikipedia has the following to say on the subject.

"Soulmate (or soul mate) is a term sometimes used to designate someone with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, friendship, love, intimacy, sexuality, and/or compatibility.

A related concept is that of the twin flame or twin soul – thought to be the ultimate soulmate, the one and only other half of one's soul, for which all souls are driven to find and join."

I think that most people hold some belief in the existence of a soulmate. But for many, that term is closer to the definition of a twin flame than wikipedia's version of soulmate. I used to subscribe to both of these beliefs. But after months of pondering the question I've come to the following conclusion: there is no such thing as a soulmate. I am convinced that there are people who we are meant to meet, people who are meant to have a place in our lives. But I no longer believe there is just one person meant to be our significant other. Here's why.

The concept of the soulmate is often expressed as the notion that every soul created is split in two. The two halves then become separate people and spend their lives looking for their other half. But at the same time we hold the belief that everyone has a soul. I find those two beliefs contradictory. If the belief in a soulmate were to mesh with the belief in a soul than we would all walk around saying that we only have "half a soul." Instead we all claim an individual, whole soul. (At least some of us) I don't think anyone has ever linked the two beliefs the way they really should be. Even if the concept of the soulmate is adjusted to hold that two souls are separated at creation, instead of one split in half, the two beliefs are still contradictory.

The very definition of the soul precludes the idea of a soulmate. While there are many different definitions, they all are some expression of the idea that the soul is a mystical, non-physical aspect unique to each person. We're created separately, uniquely. We're not created in pairs because then the soul wouldn't be unique. One member of a created pair can never be unlinked from the other. Even if the other is destroyed, it will still have it's origins in being a member of the pair.

Think of people who are married 17 million times. If there is only one person who we can truly be happy with, how do we explain multiple marriages? Are we forced to believe that those people never find their soulmates? Or are we instead forced to concede that there isn't only one person we can be happy with? And what implications does not finding our soulmate hold for our future?

My grandmother has been married twice. Her first husband, my grandfather, died when my father was 6. Years later she remarried and was again devastated when her second husband, Grandpa Ed, passed away. Who was her soulmate? Has she ever found him? It's hard to see her, a woman who was fully in love and truly happy with both men, and believe in an affirmative answer to either of the above questions.

If we're only truly compatible with one other soul, what happens if we never find them? I think belief in a soulmate dooms us to either a frantic, looming search for another or a lonely, loveless future. If our soul is separated from another or divided at creation, how can we ever be happy when we're not whole?

So I'm pretty sure my belief in the existence of a soulmate is either dead or well on its way. Just because we find someone who we spend the rest of our life with does not mean that said person was the only one in existence with whom we could have done so. And so I believe that there are people in our lives who we meet and who we are compatible with. Part of the compatibility is on the level of the soul. But in the end, our souls are all whole, all unique, and all separate. We can find someone who we are compatible with and spend the rest of our lives happy and in love. But that person isn't set in stone. We simply find them, for one reason or another, and wind up with them instead of one of the many other people we are compatible with.

3) Finally, the past. It occurs to me that the pain of the past is very often the pain of the present. We mourn for those we lose, even years after the fact. We regret past actions. And we continue to suffer from past tragedies. Some of this pain is natural and can be lived with. We will always miss our departed loved ones because the bonds we form with them always hold resonance.

Regret and old pain are particularly hard to get rid of. Moving on is a perfect example of the phrase "it's easier said than done." I haven't given enough thought to the reason why, so that will be reserved for a future rambling.

Either way, it seems that the past and the future are harder to get away from than Percy Shelley thought.

In the beginning

There was the John.

Well I'm bored as shit and decided the Eurotrip blog was not longer very useful since the Eurotrip is over. And so I created this new beast. This is the first time I've felt bloggy in a long time.

How did I manage to spend the last two nights sitting in front of my computer doing no work and completely by myself? This confuses me. Where the heck is everyone?

Last night Mike and I had a pretty amazing/creepy adventure. It all started when the roomates went to sleep and I decided to take a stroll. Well midway through my stroll I decided it was a terrible idea and turned around to come home. As I'm walking toward my building I notice this old man sitting in the driver's seat of a car, with the seat leaned all the way back. Keep in mind it's 2:30am. Anyway, Mr. Old Man sees me and is shaking uncontrollably for some reason. He also stares into my eyes and watches me the entire time I walk by. Well, I get upstairs and break out the new digital camera for an impromptu stake out.

After a few minutes of taking pictures I was running low on batteries. I went into Mike's room, waking him up in the process, to get some batteries. While in there, the dude gets out of his car. He's really tall, wearing leather gloves (no finger prints), and carrying a bag. I made the connection that the reason he didn't emerge sooner was because there were two guys standing outside near his car. Clearly he didn't want to be seen. Well Mr. Old Man walks over to a nearby dumpster and seems to be contemplating dumping his bag in there. Instead he stands behind the dumpster, pacing back and forth like he's waiting for someone. After a few minutes he walks back to his car, paces in the street back and forth about 20 times, checks all the doors and the trunk and then takes off across the street. At this point he's moving faster than should be possible for a really old man. Mike and I went to check it out and found nothing in the car and nothing in the dumpster. We think that he didn't leave the bag because there was so little trash in the dumpster.

Today there have been some more weird occurrences. Everyone who walks by the car seems to just lose their mind. One of the dinning hall workers was walking by and right near the car he just spazed out. He started pacing back and forth and then took off running. A girl walking by did nearly the same exact thing.

Later on Mike realized that he's seen the guy before. A few weeks ago he got up to close his blinds (it was 4am) and the dude was just standing across the street, near a street sign. Then he abruptly turned and took off in the same way he did last night.

So the questions are: Who is this guy? Who was he waiting for? What the hell was in that bag?