The Soul Mate Dilemma

You know it when it happens, and if you've never experienced, it will sound like so much hyperbole. You meet that one person, and when you do, things just start lining up; your mind and heart finally feel like everything is in sync. Everything just feels right, like destiny's hand is on both of your shoulders, guiding you two closer together until like atoms, you're drawn inexplicably together to become one molecule. It all just fits together and you can't fathom that it couldn't be any other way. Going beyond mere physical attraction, you see something in the other's face, the little expressions, smiles, anger, sadness; it all seems unique and special.

Some would rush to call it love, but love doesn't contain the feelings you have when you've met that certain person that just seems to complete you in every way. It comes from a higher plane, like you're connected to something beyond our senses of perception. Love is a part of it, but you can love someone without it being your soul mate. You can love someone and it can feel warm and caring, but it never feels as connected as when you meet that one.

The dilemma though faced by those that find their soul mates is the inevitable cadre of consequences that the universe inevitable puts in your path, and generally the destruction that follows. It's the dilemma of matter and ant-matter coming together. It's natural, it's beyond what we can perceive in this universe, and the coming together of these two universal particles is their immediate and cataclysmic destruction.

To know your soul mate is to live with the reality that life will never be the same after meeting that person. To be with that person, one will travel the ends of the earth, risk life and death, and will be willing to let go of everything that was their universe. You feel like if the two of you are together, everything will work out... everything will be right.

Nature is not without its sense of cruel irony. No one will warn you that you will be significantly altered by the meeting, that your physical and mental state will never be the same. And because you can't believe that it could ever end once you're with that person, you will never see the emptiness that lies before you when you two are no more. Love will never taste as sweet, loneliness will be the universe for you, and hate and contempt will follow you because of the unfairness that life will deal you.

A star that burns twice as bright, burns out twice as fast, and this will be your existence. The empty core that remains collapses upon itself, and life will blur around in a haze. The real dilemma of this finding of your soul mate is that after the star has burned, and life has found a way to divide you, you will still be left to live on. You of course have the option that Romeo and Juliet chose, but there is always tomorrow, and there is always the memory of what was once the greatest thing you have ever known.

You will have to choose to remember the past, but not live there. Take what was good and use it to move on. You will find love, but it will never be what you knew. Finding a soul mate for most is a never in a lifetime experience, and for the lucky, unfortunate that find theirs, there is a short time to realize it. They will be forever haunted by its glorious perfection, and shocked by its brevity. It's inevitable, and you will refuse to see it until it is long over. You will be tempted to tell others who find it to be forewarned, but you will know better. You know they won't hear... they've passed that event horizon and until the inevitable destruction comes, all you can do is watch and hope they survive to be able to remember what was once was.

The soul mate dilemma is in knowing and not being able to do a damn thing about it.