One concept I truly loathe in our culture is the idea of soul mates. Somewhere out there is "The One" who will complete your perfectly and will be your life long best friend as well as husband/wife. Truly, a pile of garbage and that's why I wholeheartedly agree with this piece recently forwarded to me by a friend.
For those of you who might not dig the overly religious tones, try to look past all that and simply focus on what she's saying. Her husband is not her soul mate and there really is no such animal. My wife is certainly not my soul mate. She's my lover, a great mom, a good friend, and we work well together as leaders of our family. But I've only known her for 17 years. I've been best friends with John Waxey for nearly twice that time. He's more of a soul mate to me than she is because he has known me since the seventh grade.
I don't know why we feel the need as a culture to place the care of our heart and soul into one person. What a load of crap. Life is a chorus, not a duet. There are many people along the way who are integral to how we develop and love. Why some people choose to limit themselves in such a way with this soul mate/the one garbage makes no sense to me whatsoever.
1 comment:
When I hear someone say "soul mate" I think of sappy nitwits like Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina who ran off to Argentina to rendezvous with his mistress after telling his office that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail.
The problem with "soul mates" is that the feeling of rapturous attachment doesn't last very long. Unless you have more lasting ties -- a common background, or common friends, or common goals, or similar philosophical or religious views, or children, or economic ties -- sheer physical attraction and bubbly excitement about how wonderful your "soul mate" is will never last.
Given the track record of people like Mark Sanford, it's a pretty good bet that he and his hot new Argentine wife will not be together in 10 years. She will have gained weight, gotten saggier, and grown tired of living in pits like Washington DC and South Carolina. She will want to return to her native country, hear the sounds of her native language around her, be surrounded by her family and longest and closest friends once again.
By then Sanford will be pretty old, and he too long for the familiarity of his original family and friends. He'll probably still be asking his his ex-wife to run his Congressional campaign for him. And make his lunch too.
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