Do you believe in soulmates? Why or why not?
A soulmate and a best friend are not the same. A best friend is someone you trust, enjoy, rely on, and choose to share life with. A soulmate is someone who reaches something deeper in you: someone whose presence feels like recognition, not just companionship. A best friend is someone you can talk to about almost anything. A soulmate is someone with whom you feel deeply known, even in silence. A best friend knows your stories. A soulmate seems to know the shape of your soul.
There are people we meet and, almost immediately, there is a sense of recognition. It is not only that we like them. It is not only that we have things in common. It is something quieter. You feel as though they understand something about you before you have explained it properly. You feel seen. Received. At home.
I have had a few friendships like that. They have not all looked the same. Some carry the long memory of childhood: shared years, shared history, the sense of familiarity that comes from having known each other before the adult years arrived.
Others belong more to the student years. Long conversations. A sense of being understood and accepted at a time when I was still working out who I was becoming. Some friendships do not remain close in the same way, but that does not make them less real.
Other friendships come later. They may not have the weight of childhood or the intensity of formative years, but they can still feel natural from the beginning. There can be trust without strain. Conversation without performance. The freedom to talk about anything, but no need to talk about everything. That matters to me.
A soul-level friendship does not have to be intense or dramatic. It does not have to demand constant access. Sometimes its gift is that it is uncomplicated.
To be honest, I hesitate over the word soulmate. It can sound as though one person is meant to know all of us. But I do not think the soul is known by one person. I am not even sure it should be. Different people know different parts of us.
Some know where we came from. Some know who we were when life was still opening up. Some know our work, our grief, our humour, our faith, our doubts, our failures, and our strange little habits. No one person holds all of that.
So perhaps I do not believe in a soulmate. Or perhaps I believe in soulmates, plural. People whose presence has depth. Not just attraction. Not just compatibility. But the sense that something in you has been met.
They may stay for life. They may belong to a season. They may be close at hand or far away. Each one knows something true. And together, across time, they help us understand the shape of our own soul.
The Afterword 
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