Soulmate: A reflection
Is there someone out there just for you?
Spoken rendition of “Soulmate”.
Writing
Soulmate was a poem that flowed to the page with relative ease. The topic came to me on a walk while I was listening to a podcast, but honestly, I don’t recall if there was any real discussion about soulmates, relationships and destiny or if the word soulmate was just used. Either way, I had just put a poem aside that I had been working on for 10 days, and I felt rather stuck and overall was uninspired. Miraculously, as I’m one who struggles to put things aside unfinished, I did set that poem aside just the prior morning. When I sat down to begin writing this poem, inspiration returned. The first half, up to the stanza that ends with “I was destined to love myself and pour myself into me” came out in the span of a short ten minutes. Some edits were needed in that section, but not many.
The last half, which I wrote the next day, was a slower start. The space of a day created a desire for a tone shift, starting with the need for the writing voice to explain themself just a bit, then took another swipe at the cultural idea, and finally moved into what the writer feels is true, beautiful and whole.
I then edited over my 30-minute writing sessions on work mornings. “Maybe, I still do” was changed from “Honestly, I still do” (we are good at lying to ourselves), there were some word choices changed here and there, a few unneeded sentences deleted, and massaging of the last stanza. The final edit in this poem was one theme I thought was missing, an addition to the “soul in” stanza.
soul inside a silent search where lines between air and body blur into a vanishing mist.
Inspiration
This poem is a critique of the way relationships are often positioned in our culture…there is someone out there who has been designed for us, we just have to find them, and that person will complete us in some way. And then all will be ok. There is a lot of religion bound up in the story but also a lot of Disney. There is room for very little mystery, change is often viewed as a threat, personal autonomy within the relationship is discarded, and commitment trumps all. To me it seems that when mystery, change, and autonomy are removed, the relationship actually suffers. My speculation for the biggest reason for that suffering is the loss of the individual within the relationship.
Relationships are a beautiful thing, one that can enrich each of our lives, and that is the story the last part of the poem is trying to tell. However, there is a new entity that comes into being when two things come together, a new life in its own right! The relationship impacts the two who are part of it, shapes them and molds them. It does not need to be a thing that replaces the person that shows up or takes away from who that person is in their own place in the world.
Ultimately, this poem explores the idea of a soulmate fitting best in how we describe who we are individually. We are each a mystery, and the relationship we hold with ourselves is the one we are closest to and most impacted by. To get to know that person in an honest and deep way is some of the hardest work anyone can do. It is also the work that will most shape our lives, and when we know a few things about ourselves, allows us to show up in the world and be in relationship with almost everything that we share space with. To be in a pure relationship with oneself is to allow the opportunity to be in a pure relationship with the world.
May you find yourself in pure relationship!
Brian
If you missed the “A Poem” post of Soulmate, you can read it here!
