 |  |  | | Looking for Your Soul Mate: Does Your “Soul Mate Standard” Hold You Back from Finding Love? | | |  | | |
There’s a myth that not many people know, which holds that at the beginning of time, humans were originally four-armed, four-legged, two-faced creatures. But Zeus was intimidated by their power that he separated them in half, cursing them to wander the world in desperate search for the one that will make them complete. – This is the concept of what people now call: Soul Mates.
Many people desire to find the perfect partner. One who best understands us and finds the deepest, innermost person that we keep inside; a partner who will accept who we are and will bring out the best in us. And in almost all cases, we relate this nebulous person with our idea of the perfect romantic partner. We spend a good part of our lives trying to find this person. We set standards, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, in the hope of determining the “ONE” - physical features, attitudes, an outgoing personality, mental capabilities and the even social status of a person. Women may often reject those that do not meet these requisites. Men, on the other hand, prefer to court those that closely resemble these wanted features. Or worse, we deliberately push the love of someone aside, not realizing that what they offer us is genuine; just to hold on to our belief of a perfect “soul mate”.
There is nothing wrong per se, if we believe in such. The belief gives us hope in times where we feel neglected or lonely, just because we think that somewhere in this world; there is someone who is destined to be “ours”. The problem begins when we are eaten by this belief to a level where we close our minds to other possibilities. We reject the love of others only because we “feel” they are not the one, without actually seeing the real person beyond the soul mate standards we have put up. We stop short at giving them a chance when we do not see in them that which we hanker for. We get unenthusiastic at exploring the possibilities of getting to know them better when people do not meet the superficial standards that we set.
At this point, we almost intentionally overlook what is authentic and existent right in front of us, and continue to feed our insatiable desire for the (perhaps) non-existent perfect. Furthermore, we fail to savor the joys of our here and now. We are so engulfed in the search for our soul mates, that we forget the delight of smiling to a stranger, the warm feeling of opening ourselves to anyone.
It is not sufficient that we set standards as though those were the only ways to find and know our “better half”. Loving is a process; and everything that has to do with loving goes through inevitable changes every so often. Don’t clutch on to your soul mate standard and get too rigid; give it some flexibility and room for modification; then maybe you will finally find the love of your life.
Love will come to those who are willing to love. Give love a chance. If a person makes your heart beat, and there are no impediments other than shallow standards, then bend those standards a little and let that feeling grow. There will always be risks, but then again, the rewards are far greater. And maybe, when we least expect it, the person we gave a chance to would turn out to be our true soul mate, after all.
by Connie
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