Symposium

I particularly enjoyed Aristophanes speech in Plato’s Symposium. The idea that we were all once connected was sweet and it made sense as to why we would want to find the person we were connected to again. They’re our soul mates. Our other halves. They’re the ones that we connect with the most on the levels that count.

Aristophane speaks,
"After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one, and would have perished form hunger without ever making an effort, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, whether the section of an entire man or of an entire woman, which had usurped the name of man and woman, and clung to that." (16-17)

It's heart wrenching to imagine two beings so torn apart from each other trying to cling to one another in order to be one being. What they must feel. It seems painful to even think about needing to be one like that and not being able to achieve it.

In response to Aristophane's speech, I wondered how many of us have gone through life without finding our other halves? You hear about it all the time; the break-ups, separations, and divorce. Do all of these things happen because you were deceived by the itching in your shoulder blades? Do they happen because who you thought was your other half, really wasn’t? And in those cases, is there really someone else out there you should be searching for?

It’s kind of always been a fascination of mine. If soul mates are real, what happens when they have miles and miles of ocean and land between them? Do they go through this life miserable because they never meet their other half or does fate and circumstance eventually bring them together for a happy ending? Or do they maybe find each other in their next lives? I’m curious.