(Resurrecting this from my tumblr, written on 26/10/11)
So I’ve been asked if I believed in soul mates.
Aside from being deeply cheesy, the hopelessly romantic idea that one’s life is unalterably attached to another because they share a single, ethereal core is, to me, one of the most pervasively irritating plots ever written (next to teenage vampire romance, that is).
What I hope for, if I were to hope for anything nearly as dramatic as soul mates, are kindred spirits. In spite of my early onset cynicism, my overall happiness relies so much on my belief in the idea that there are people just like me out there—people who like the same music, read the same books, watch the same movies, eat the same food; people who find the idea of spending a night staring at empty space rewarding, or who get excited over watching the sunset each and every time; people who make the same logical connections as I do, whose synapses would lead them to the same sense of humor as I do.
I like that we aren’t tethered to each other in the same way that romantics conceive soul mates. It isn’t so much that we are connected but that, I guess, we have the ability to connect.
And no, there is no romantic expectation. I find it sufficiently comforting to think that somewhere, there is someone who looks at the world in the way that I do.
Sometimes I tend to think that life wouldn’t be half as meaningful if not for the hope that someone else understands it the way that I do.
Aside from being deeply cheesy, the hopelessly romantic idea that one’s life is unalterably attached to another because they share a single, ethereal core is, to me, one of the most pervasively irritating plots ever written (next to teenage vampire romance, that is).
What I hope for, if I were to hope for anything nearly as dramatic as soul mates, are kindred spirits. In spite of my early onset cynicism, my overall happiness relies so much on my belief in the idea that there are people just like me out there—people who like the same music, read the same books, watch the same movies, eat the same food; people who find the idea of spending a night staring at empty space rewarding, or who get excited over watching the sunset each and every time; people who make the same logical connections as I do, whose synapses would lead them to the same sense of humor as I do.
I like that we aren’t tethered to each other in the same way that romantics conceive soul mates. It isn’t so much that we are connected but that, I guess, we have the ability to connect.
And no, there is no romantic expectation. I find it sufficiently comforting to think that somewhere, there is someone who looks at the world in the way that I do.
Sometimes I tend to think that life wouldn’t be half as meaningful if not for the hope that someone else understands it the way that I do.
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