already gone?

Twice in my life I can remember falling for someone the instant our eyes met.

On the first occasion I was a teacher at a high school in North Queensland and I was walking past the library when a student called to me and introduced me to a new member of staff. I remember nothing of the conversation I had with the new maths teacher, I just remember shaking her hand and looking into her ice-blue eyes and knowing instantly that somewhere in time and space, we had met before.

I was 23 years old and I barely knew myself. I hardly even understood that I was gay, let alone that it was possible that another woman might feel the same way about me. So, even when she and I sat opposite eachother on a couch in my livingroom one Friday afternoon and she swept the hair back from my face and told me how much she would miss me when I left to travel overseas, I wasn’t able to understand that this was her, making a move. Years later I can only shake my head and wonder what might have been had I been more self-aware; more courageous.

The second time, I was 26. I had just come back from living abroad – a couple of significant relationships under my belt. I met her at the local Uni pub- she was a friend of a friend’s friend and for some reason we both wound up in a small group of people playing a ridiculous drinking game. We had to look directly into the eyes of the person opposite us and say “I’m so excited and I just can’t fight it, I’m about to lose control and I think I like it” deadpan. If you smiled or laughed or cracked in any way, you had to skull. She was opposite me. I started confidently but as I looked in her eyes I had that feeling of the earth falling away; everything was spinning and she was grinning the sexiest grin on earth. I caved. Two weeks later we ended up in bed and I was quietly obsessed thank you very much. She was straight and not ready not to be – and she was pretty young, and maybe in the same place I had been three years before. It ended badly – for me- and though we still see each other occasionally and it is fine, nice even – for a long time I regarded her as the one who got away; my relationship nemesis who, were she to click her fingers and nod, I would drop anything and anyone to be with.

There’s another lover I’ve had who I knew was going to change my life as soon as I set eyes on her. I was at the top of a staircase, she at the bottom. I saw her and I knew in a way that comes without knowledge.

Then again, I have had slow burning loves that I didn’t recognise instantly but whose eyes I still cannot meet without the recognition of a lasting connection – one heart to another; one soul to another. Still I meet their gaze and wonder what part it is they have left to play in a story yet unfolding.

And yet each of these magical, wonderful experiences lived their lives, died their deaths.

I am wondering about the significance of each of these loves now because I have just finished reading Paulo Coelho’s “Brida” – essentially a novel about each person’s search in life for their soulmate. Though I dog-eared many pages for review at some time in the future, I admit to finishing the book and wanting to throw it across the room.

It all started so well, because the theory is a really interesting one to me. At one point in the book, one of the characters explains how the earth’s population continues to expand when it began with so few and scientifically, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. The theory is that in certain reincarnations, we divide in two; our souls divide and we scatter the globe. If this division and scattering were to continue ad infinitum, we would also weaken terribly; that’s why we find ourselves again and again through love; each soul ultimately finding one or more shards of itself in any lifetime.

Coelho says that we can only achieve union with “God” when we manage to commune with one of these shards- our soul mate; that the whole of any individual’s life on earth can be summed up by that search; that all else we achieve will be incomplete if we fail in this task.

The book follows the central character through this journey which is led by two teachers; one who is her soulmate. She learns that love is the bridge between the seen and unseen world that any of us may experience and that when we do, we are capable of learning everything and knowing things we never even dared to think, because love is the key to understanding all of the mysteries of the world.

She learns that the wisdom of soulmates is that they always recognise eachother by a certain light in the eyes or a point of light over the left shoulder. Ultimately, although she recognises and “unites” with her soulmate, she does not go on to build a life with him. The lesson apparently being that no-one can possess the beautiful things of this earth; they can be known and treasured and loved and remembered, but not owned; that a soulmate is never lost, because they are never possessed in the first place.

Coelho says that life hinges on faith. That in searching for the answer to the meaning of life, each of us can only accept that we will never know it, but that there is a meaning beyond us all. Our only choice is to accept the mystery, hold faith, follow our dreams. True love he says, allows each person to follow their own path knowing they’ll never lose touch with their soulmate.

I could bust the myth right now and say I think it’s all a croc of shit. The problem is, I believe most of it is true.

My problem, my sadness, is a question. Is it really enough to merely know and observe your soulmate? To enjoy them as you might a beautiful flower in a field or an unforgettable sunset? To have a burning knowledge and memory of them that lasts in your heart but to try to make a life beyond each other?

I wanted to throw the book across the room because I want the version of the dream we’ve all been sold; that life will deliver your soulmate and it will be happy ever after. But maybe it doesn’t happen like that. Maybe the faith comes in believing that you are cradled safe in your destiny if you will only listen and follow – not attempt to control and own. Maybe the deliverance of our soulmate teaches us lessons we need to learn for life and happiness beyond them.

That’s not what I want. I want my personal legend to be the successful search for a soulmate and the building of a full and rich life with them; a true partnership of positivity and growth. But I have to accept that the meaning of life is beyond my reach and that my time with my soulmate may already be done. The faith comes in believing that if that is so, then the lesson is learned and the partnership of positivity and growth is yet to come, waiting to be born; perhaps even as we speak.

I don’t know. And I guess that’s the biggest lesson of all.