Souls Divided

One of the inexorable facts of human existence is that we are ultimately, always alone inside our heads. Discounting the divine and ignoring the possible yet tasteless jokes about multiple personalities, there comes an incontrovertible fact that our thoughts belong to us and are, forever, only ours.

Writers do their best to express thoughts on paper or in digital form, but I suspect that to express truly and fully the fullness of even a single instant of our simplest thoughts would take hundreds of pages, connected as each of thoughts are to our history and our learning experiences.

And this would not even touch upon the unconscious; the low level motivator behind the scenes that can generate entire worlds, buildings, and complete, fully detailed human beings from scratch through the “simple” act of dreaming. The unconscious mind seems to act like a puppet master—the animator for we, the animators. The only way to express unconscious thoughts is to turn off the conscious and hope that what we write or say afterward is in some way vaguely comprehensible.

Our minds are alone, and our minds are not particularly good company for themselves, either. Our minds need “reality checks”, without which our minds drift ever further from the reality based on external inputs and relies more and more on the reality as generated from our internal thoughts alone. When this happens, either we become clinically weird, or we become artists, which is really saying much the same thing.

And how do we attempt to conquer this isolation? One way is via the quest for love, the search for a “soul mate.” We seek someone less to share our thoughts with, but more to share our bodies and minds with. Many of us seek someone we can completely understand, and someone for which we can be completely understood, for this is the closest we can come to breaking the isolation of our minds.

I cannot help but wonder if this is part of the reason we are both so desiring and so fearful of God. First, how great would it be that someone knows our every thought, and that we are never alone. Second, how terrifying is it that someone can know our every thought, and that we are never alone.

May we all find a way of expressing that which we are to another or others, and may this isolation of aloneness be mitigated by sharing our spirit with our friends.