Back to Future

I recollected a conversation with a friend that happened several years ago. We had been to the same high school and were discussing the success of our batch (most of who were batchmates since 1st grade). Our success – as a batch – wasn’t something to be proud of, we agreed, and wondered why it was so. It was definitely not the lack of talent; in fact, we may have had too much of it. So what was the reason that many of us were still struggling with our careers?

The reason I still remember that conversation is because of an explanation he offered. “I think what we do is anticipate the success of our endeavors, taste the success in our imagination, and then decide that we do not want that success. It is not really that great, not worth all our effort, and so we give up our efforts on it. Perhaps that’s why so many of us keep switching our careers and are still struggling on that front, perhaps looking for a success that is worth fighting for.”

The reason I recollected that conversation is because of a book I am reading. In the book titled, “The Motivated Mind,” the author, Dr. Raj Persaud, a psychiatrist, discusses the results from a study by psychologists who, to their surprise, found that

“those who frequently fantasized about what would happen after they achieved their goals in the end were much less likely to be successful than those who simply had a clear idea of what they wanted and a positive expectation of achieving it.

One theory as to why wild fantasizing about desired outcomes is so counterproductive when it comes to actually achieving goals is that if you mentally enjoy a desired future in the here and now, then this curbs current investment into a possible future. After all, if you are having a fantastic time fantasizing about that date with Julia Roberts, why bother going through the strain of actually getting fit?” [98-99].

Though the above theory is not exactly the one my friend had offered, may be he was onto something here.

Soulmate(s)

Interestingly, in Philosophy, whereas the concept of ’soul’ has been extensively deliberated, the concept of ’soul mates’ has been not. But outside philosophy, especially in popular media, most, if not all, books or movies on romance have the concept of soul mates embedded in them. It does not take a philosopher to speculate about soul mates, and many a philosopher have been born out of a sorrowful ’soul mate’ history.

Going through such a phase myself, of late, I have been wondering about the concept of soul mate. Not about my soulmate in particular, (though it could be), but about soulmates in general.

1) What if there can be more than one soulmates for a person? If we were to assume that soul is multidimensional, then cannot a soul have a mate for one dimension, and another mate for other dimension?

2) What if a person can be one’s own soulmate? In its current form, a soul mate is understood as external to oneself. So, the search for wholeness is externally-oriented, seeking to fill in one’s incompleteness from outside. But what if the internal holds the potential for wholeness?

What set me off thinking was Richard Bach’s book ‘A Bridge Across Forever’, in which he writes at one place:

“If the perfect mate, I thought, is one who meets all the needs all the time, and if one of our needs is for variety itself, then no one person anywhere can be the perfect mate!

The only true soulmate is to be found in many different people.”

And how does the idea of evolution of a soul fit in with the idea of a soulmate? Do soulmates evolve together? Because evolving entails a change in wordviews, values, abilities, knowledge, etc, then how does one soul’s evolution affect its soul mate’s evolution?

How does one know when he or she has found one’s soul mate?