Soulmates

Do you believe in soulmates?

I just finished reading this book called Brida by renowned author Paulo Coelho. I wanted to read his books because he wrote The Alchemist and according to my hubby, that was a book with Christian roots and was deeply inspiring.

But this book Brida was difficult for me to comprehend mainly because it was an exploratory text into the world of witchcraft and magic and what on earth has that to do with Christianity? I suppose it could be the author’s way of trying to explain the mysteries of the occult as another form of God worshipping that may be unorthodox in our Christian society.

I don’t think I will ever know. But the part that caught my attention was his idealogies about soulmates. According to the book, our souls do not die when we die. Agree. Instead they are reincarnated into parts of people who live after us. Ermmm… It explained that in the beginning there were only Adam and Eve but since them, billions and possibly even trillions of people have lived and died.

How is it likely that every person is new? So goes the idea that our souls must be reborned and our memories living on. Hmm… sounds familiar. A recent book I read called Memories subscribe to the same theory.

But when our souls are reborned, they are not in whole, they are broken into parts and in a particular age, it is possible for two parts to meet each other and when they do, they are able to recognise each other as soulmates. And each part completes the whole so it goes.

Seriously I cannot subscribe to such an idea because I don’t believe in reincarnation. I believe that when we die, we go to heaven and live in eternity with God.

Why on earth would we want to relive lives over and over again? And why would God plan that for us – that we may seek the path of knowing or not knowing him again and again and thus the possibility of losing a saved person?

But what I do believe is that there are special people in our lives that God has planned for us to meet. My husband is one of them. I don’t know if he is my soulmate but he is my bestest friend and sole confidante. We have known each other for 16 years, dated 13 of those years, married for 7 and parented three beautiful children in between that.

I have never known anyone else so intimately in my life to the extent that we can finish each other sentences, know each other’s thoughts without vocalising it and in an eerie way, know when one party is going to call the other and pull out our handphones subconsciously.

But then I have also met other people who hold special places in my heart. Memories that refuse to go away no matter how hard you try to forget or don’t even bother to remember. I wonder if these people were meant to be my soulmates?

The book Brida concluded that soulmates don’t need to be together but that during that short time that their lives intertwined, that it completed or fulfilled a purpose in the each other’s life. I can live with that. Because I know that for one person, our paths crossed at a point of time when we entered difficult phases of our lives and desperately needed each other for support.

And I also thank God for a friend at work who lent me friendship in a hostile environment and I like to believe that I have taught her how to be more of a friend to others at work. And now we are parting ways. Perhaps it is God’s way of saying that we have learnt what we can from each other and should not cripple ourselves by over-relying on each other.

At times like this, I thank God for spouses who never have a reason to leave you because we have committed before God to stay together till death do us part. Of course, God determines when we die too. So perhaps a better way to sum it all up is like in the book of Esther – ‘for such time as this’. Our paths cross for such a time as this.