I met the most wonderful and beautiful young woman on Monday at my new job and it is just so silly how alike we are - it must be our shared astrological sign or something. Her greenish-gray eyes sparkle with life and they reflect her inner beauty which in turn matches her stunning exterior; she is tall and slim with thick dirty blond hair and she possesses the most catching and contagious smile you can imagine, her grin coming straight from her heart that is precariously pinned to her sleeve in the same manner that this fellow Pisces wears her own. She is an absolute joy to be around because every word bubbling out of her mouth is full of enthusiasm and happiness and she exudes this amazing positivity that warms up my insides like only a cup of vanilla oolong tea used to; perhaps being in love and having found her soul mate has something to do with her exuberance along with the journey she has been on for the past two years in order to find herself; the intensely soul-tingling and gratifying love she has now found is the culmination of this quest and I wish to share her story with you.
When she was twelve years old, she met an eighteen year old in a bowling alley she was playing at with her family; the two of them had as much fun together as their age difference allowed them to and she remembers that she had felt what any typical twelve-year-old girl might feel when faced with a cute boy. It turns out though that their paths were to merge once again because a couple of months later, he actually moved into her house! You see, her family played host to young hockey players wishing to play in that area and he so happened to fit that description. Thus, they lived under the same roof together for a long period and became very close friends who would have very challenging and meaningful life conversations, though she was still only twelve.
Of course at this point, any good love story needs a separation period when the two main characters are forced apart by an act of fate, family or other, while we, the audience, think that the two lovers will never reunite - and that is exactly what happened to our two young lovers - he had finished his hockey term and went back to his own family and they lost touch as a result. Divided by physical distance, they both lived their own lives, respectively falling in and out of love with different individuals that one can only imagine never seemed to be the right fit for either of them without their knowing why that was exactly so. Evidently, we, again that pesky audience, know that it is because they were not with EACH OTHER that it never felt right with every person they attempted to share their lives with.
Yet somehow she did know because his image was always lurking at the back of her mind and she would often find herself wondering what he was doing and where he was. Fed up one day of not knowing, she finally decided that she needed to find him - and she actually did, out of the blue, courtesy of a modern technological tool called Facebook. She wrote him a message, his message to her got lost, but they did finally and quickly settle that he would come and see her in Montreal.
The amazing part of this story is that she knew, without even having seen him after all of those years, that he was the man she would marry. She even told him her ring-size in a funny and flirty email to which he replied that he would never forget that number for the rest of his life. They spent an incredible weekend together during which they both kept staring at each other and exclaiming that they had found each other - not in the obvious way that they were now standing face to face after not having known what either were doing for so many years, but in a way that goes much farther and way beyond every day life. What they felt and meant was that they had spent all of their lives finding each other and that they had now just completed the cycle yet again in their present lives.
Once they had reunited for the weekend, we can empathize how heart-wrenching it must have been for the both of them when Sunday evening came around and he had to go back to his home and business in Ontario. By Tuesday afternoon though, she knew that she had to be with him no matter what and that what would be crazy would be to stay in Montreal away from him rather than her going to join him in Ontario. On Friday, she left everything to go and be with her love so as to start a new life with the man she feels as though was the missing piece of her own life's jigsaw puzzle.
When I listened to her and watched her eyes express the certainty of every word she was saying, I got tingles up and down my spine and goosebumps all along my arms. I could not help but share in her happiness and to smile as widely as she was while feeling all of the excitement coursing through her body and giving off an undeniable energy that electrified the air around her. You cannot help but question your own reservations about supposed soul mates after you have heard my new friend's tale.
After hearing her story, I was myself reminded of my favorite portion of Plato's "Symposium" in which he explains through the character of Aristophanes why it is that people feel the need to find their other halves. You see, at one time in ancient history, human beings were actually made up of two individuals fused together into giant creatures with four legs and four arms; the three possible combinations were that of two females, two males or a male and a female. In our unions we were very strong creatures and we were causing a lot of havoc and problems for the gods; as a result, Zeus logically decided to divide each giant into their respective human forms so that we were no longer the gigantic creatures made up of two humans as we had been - in this manner we were both weaker and yet more useful to the gods because we were more numerous. However, we were now also single selves longing and searching for that other self to complete us. And so that explains, at least for Aristophanes and perhaps Plato himself, why it is that some males long for other males, some females desire other females while others want members of the opposite sex because we are each looking for the other half of ourselves from which we were split. This story also explains how "love is the name of the desire and pursuit of wholeness." I only have one bone to pick with this story now that I am a bit older and hopefully slightly wiser: a person needs to be whole in and of themselves before he or she can achieve another sort of completeness with that other person who is meant to share, not overtake or penetrate and merge, their life.
So after hearing my friend's love story, at the very least you will hopefully be happy that such a fabulous woman is following her heart and has found someone she feels she can share her life with while becoming an even better person because of his involvement. I am not quite sure what I believe, but I know that what has happened to my new friend is real and I can only hope and pray that the same sort of love will enter into my life. Meanwhile, I will continue my solitary journey of loving myself and becoming my own, whole person - perhaps one day I will find my giant half and I will be even happier than I already am with just being myself rather than a twinned entity.
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