Earned It

Do we have another soul inside us?

As I learn about connecting to one's soul, one's own spirituality, I'm curious about our competing desires.  Science gives us much information about our impulsive nature...hormones, psychological secrets, our personal interactions with others that guide and sometimes wreck our best intentions.

In trying to make sense of my next 50 years, I find it hard to understand how my past self is the same one who will carry me forward.  The term "reinvention" irks me.  As a catch all phrase for life's foibles, it bears more weight with magazine covers and catchy social media tags than how reality works.

We can't reinvent the core of who we are without destroying our identity.  Maybe that's the goal for some, to escape their own identity.  I'd be more comfortable with reading the headline of "Woman Explores Herself" or "Mid-lifers Confronting Their Own Evolution."

I remember reading the novel Sybil as a middle school student.  At the time, many of us fantasized about being ruled by another presence inside us, manipulating our thoughts and actions.  As most trends go, it gained media traction for a while and it became popular to jokingly blame our other personality for mistakes.  Increasingly, multiple personalities appeared in court cases and medical claims until pure science fell on the side of their rarity.  And we masses were back to confronting our motivations and desires as belonging to just ourselves...just our own error pocked selves.

Merriam-Webster defines "soul."  The corresponding comments ponder how the soul differs from the spirit, etc.

Soul.  Sole.  I think I just answered my own question.  The soul is sole.  It is wholly within myself and I, I am just one but a mosaic of my life.

And I've earned it.  Now to become comfortable with the evolution of my soul.