She was haunted by the same thoughts again and again. A faceless face that flashed in her dreams time and again. She would close her eyes and trying to obliterate all her thoughts, her worries, calm her mind and reaching into the furthest corners of serenity when the face would flash in front of her. She would open her eyes and close again and the face would vanish. It was not an archetype dream of a Prince Charming, this guy had flaws, he was just as plain as ordinary as she was. And yet she found him re-surfacing again and again. After a while she got used to seeing his face in her dreams. He became as real to her as the stars in the sky - she knew their existence was true, but she had no idea how to reach to him. She would point her finger and draw imaginary smiley faces joining the stars in a line. "There you are." she would finally say." Much better." and sleep.
His cynicism came in a self-addressed envelope. When he looked at himself all he was wanted to make things perfect- he knew not how. A little better at academics, a little better at sports, a little better in articulating - he was driven. He would sit staring at the sky, at the dead of the night, looking at the stars, figuring their constellations, the Aries there, Taurus here, Pisces that way, he would think. The stars meant mystery to him. He had a telescope through which he would observe the night sky, looking for subtle changes in alignment, a shooting star, a falling meteoroid. One day while during his regular observation she heard a voice whispering into his ears "Look out of the window, Look carefully, you will see me." He would look, confused and unsettled. At first he thought he was imagining the voices or that his mind was simply playing tricks on him. But the same voice would call again. Again he would look out and see nothing but the beautiful full moon - magically calling him from somewhere in the back of his souls oldest memories.
She would feel him there, her ghostly suitor. When she combed her hair in the mirror she would see him standing behind her, far far away. But she knew that if she spun around to see, there would be nothing except silence and stillness. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she would hear him promising " Wait for me. I'll find you when if it is the last thing I'd do." She would be consumed by this eerie feeling of someone who is not there, yet she would feel his presence. She would wrestle with the fact that he wasn't real.
Years went on, and she would accept his ghostly presence, assuring that he is there somewhere. "What is your name?" she would ask, or "Where can I find you?" She would get no answers. In the end she decided to call him Fate. She decided that she is not allowed to search for him, just wait. It would be a natural process through which he wouldappearbeforeher.
He decided that he has to find her. It irked him, something in-explainable, a conundrum that he had to solve. He called her Destiny, as if it was the challenge of his lifetime to find her. Fate and Destiny, after all, are one and the same thing.He learnt to recognize her. She learnt to wait for him in blind faith. Both had to live real live with real problems and real people in it. Neither could shake off the very real belief that the other one existed somewhere out there. And there was just this vast space between the two, that seems to be apparently filled, but in both their minds that space was empty-waiting for a magical moment of contentment.
How many times she would convince herself that man standing in front of her is her Fate? How many time he would mistake her for someone else? Would Fate and Destiny give up, burn out, writing it all off as some figment of their imagination. Do soulmates really exist? Is it an idealistic manifestation in our brain?
We are all looking for that great love. The one that is eternal. We have searched for it in the books, in movies, in the theater, in passionate love songs, in poems and ballads. We have imagined love to be there for us, waiting around the corner, to fall on us like rain, to watch over our head like an umbrella. We are all searching for that love hoping that one day Love will find us even if we don't find love.
And yet this love is a slippery blob of mercury. Just when we think we have found it, it metamorphoses into something else. Just when we think we have understood it, conquered it and tamed it, it resurfaces in its primitive form and unleashes agony. 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy”- it is the quicksand of ambivalence. No great song can define it; no story is great enough to encompass love in it. The moment we try to ask, to dissect, to probe love, it deviates like a beam of light, from one point to another, leaving behind a mirage or a marsh light to baffle our observations.
And thus love remains illusive and an ever-changing chameleon that blushes red at sunset, darkens blue with the night, pales at dawn and shines in daylight. Like sand in a tightly closed fist, it slips away, every grain of it – to a free flowing dune. So don’t hope to understand love or overpower it. Let it grow, let it transcend to you down the stairs, like an finality. A soulmate is not someone you are in love with. They are not someone you have a karmic connection with. They are not someone you want to spent all your time, your life with.
They are someone you miss hanging out before you have even met. They are the one that upon meeting you know there has to be a second meeting and a third, so on and so forth. No questions asked. No finding out about each other. You have already known them as well as you know yourself. You have seen them in your eyes. You have known them all along. You understand them in the soul level because you share the same source.
Unfortunately this is always not a blissful experience. Most of us are not ready to meet the other halves, because we are not ready to look at ourselves in the mirror. Unless you truly love and accept yourself, you would not find your soulmate. For soulmates are not some fantastic persons send to save you from the ups and downs of life. They are not there to make your life magically perfect or fairytale-like. They simply love you and accept unlike other.
Don't not ask if all this is true. Or whether it makes sense. Believing is upto you. Romantics will believe, pragmatics will not. Optimistics will hope, pessimistic will not. It is as true as our belief that each life on earth as a purpose, a goal to fulfil. We all have to fit into roles we play. But don't ask me if searching for a soulmate is worth the hunt?
Ask yourself. Only you know what it is going to take to find them. Perhaps you will telepathically connect once you meet them. Perhaps you will go through some bad relationships first in order to find them. Perhaps you were just meant to experience the longing. Perhaps you will fail to see them at first and then slowly recognize them and accept them and then be truly content.
We do not know the answers. Shakespeare said that Journey's end at lovers meeting. Cherish the gift of finding yourself in another's eyes and see how beautiful you are. Cherish the gift of having unspoken understanding and enjoying solitude with a company. For one is a co-incidence, but two is rhythm. And love is the most wonderful way of binding all we have to say to someone in just one word. It is our greatest gift. Great battles have been fought for love, great venture have been undertaken. People die for love, cheat, steal, lie for love. Or even want to buy or sell love. "If you pluck out the heart, To find what makes it move. You'll halt the clock That syncopates our love."(Plath) And yet, love survives the rigmarole of daily lives, and make living so much worthwhile. Without love, this world is a hopeless and a dangerous place.
There is nothing more magical than this fact that - Love Survives Everything. In a perfectly chaotic world where there is hundred opportunities to strangle love with copious pollutants, love comes out unscarred - the only magic in this world we can cast without a wand. And it is called LOVE.........................
.............................It truly is. Happy Valentines Day.
The Marble like Earth as seen from Apollo 17
And that is the Earth as seen from Voyager Spacecraft
Family Portrait of our Solar System as seen from Voyager I
