AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"From this writer over here, not one micro-shrimp could I keep, from as much as I could read of her books. From another over there, I understood nothing but this: 'We are not what we seem.' Hurray! That, intuitively I know, is TRUE! The rest of a book might be seawater, but the whale keeps that sentence.
"Little by little, I think we build a conscious understanding of what we're born already knowing: what the highest
inner us wants to believe, it's true. Our conscious mind, though, isn't happy till it can explain in words.
"Before I knew it, in just a few decades, I had a system of thinking that gives me answers when I ask."
I looked quickly to Leslie, and she waved a little wave to say she was still there.
"What was the question?" I said. "Oh. Where do I get my crazy ideas? Answer: sleep-fairy, walk-fairy, shower-fairy. Book-fairy. And in these last few years, from my wife. Now when I have questions I ask her and she tells me the answer. If you haven't already, I'd suggest you want to find your soulmate, soon as you can. Next question?"
So much to say, I thought, and just one day to say it in each town that asks us to come and talk. Eight hours is not nearly enough. How do speakers tell people what they need to tell in one hour? Our first hour, we've barely outlined the framework of how we look at the world.
"The lady there, way back on the right side ..."
"My question is for Leslie. How do you know when you meet your soulmate?"
My wife looked at me splitsecond terror, lifted her microphone.
"How do you know when you meet your soulmate?" she repeated, calm as though she did this all the time. "I didn't know, when I met mine. It was in an elevator. 'Going up?' I said. 'Yes,' he said. Neither of us knew what those words would mean to the people we are now.
"Four years later we got to know each other and all at once we were best friends. The more I knew him, the more I admired him, the more I thought what a truly wonderful person he is!
"That's a key. Look for a love-aflair that gets better with
time, admiration brightening, trust that grows through storms.
"With this one man I saw that intense intimacy and joy were possible for me. I used to think those were my own special needs, my personal signs of a soulmate. Now I think they may be everyone's, but that we despair of finding them, we try to settle for less. How dare we ask for intimacy and joy when a lukewarm lover and mild happiness are the best we can find?
"Yet in our hearts we know that lukewarm will turn cold; mild happiness will become a kind of nameless sadness, nagging questions: Is this the love of my life, is this all there is, is this why I'm here? In our hearts we know there must be more, and we long for the one we never found.
"So often half a couple is trying to go up, the other half is dragging down. One walks forward, the other makes sure that for every two steps ahead they take three steps back. Better to learn happiness alone, I thought, love my friends and my cat, better wait for a soulmate who never comes than to make that dull compromise.
"A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life."
To her surprise, the crowd smothered her in applause. I had almost believed what she told me, that she might be less than perfect on the platform. She wasn't.
"Do you think the same way as he does," the next person called from the audience, "do you agree on everything?"
"Do we agree on everything," she said. "Most times. He turns up the radio, and I find that he's the only other person I've known who's enchanted by bagpipes. He's the only other who can sing 'Alone Am I' from Tubby the Tuba, word for word with me, from childhood memory.
"Other times," she said, "we couldn't have started farther apart ... I was a war-resister, Richard was an Air Force pilot; one man at a time for me, Richard's only woman was many women. He was wrong both times, and so of course he changed.
"But at the last it doesn't matter whether we agree or not, or who's right. What matters is what goes on between the two of us ... are we always changing, are we growing and loving each other more? That's what matters."
"May I add a word," I said.
"Of course."
"Thi
ngs around us-houses, jobs, cars-they're props, they're settings for our love. The things we own, the places we live, the events of our lives: empty settings. How easy to chase after settings, and forget diamonds! The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?"
At the first break, most of the people stood and stretched, some came to the front with books needing autographs.
Others met and talked, without formal introduction, at the place near the stage that we had set aside for them.
While the people were getting back to their seats for the fifth hour of the talk, I touched Leslie's shoulder. "How are you doing, little wook? Are you all right?"
