For a long time, the western world believed we had just one life to live. You’d be born, would live your life the best you could trying hard not to get God pissed; you’d do a lot of praying to prove to God and yourself you were truly sorry about stupid things you did and then, when you died, that was it. You’d go to heaven, purgatory or hell while you waited for the judgment day. Pretty simple and straight forward.

Then, men, eternally curious about things, started asking questions. Questions like “How come God, being pure Love and Forgiveness, will take away the life of some poor innocent newly-born while some worthless scumbags sometimes live ‘forever’?”. And that would generate infinite quarrels over the ‘fairness’ of the entire process. It did not sound too right. Something was missing. “Why will some honest, hard working, God fearing people suffer throughout their entire lives while others will live happily regardless how skewed, degraded, immoral and far from God they are?” “Why are some of us so fortunate while others are doomed to be miserable?”… Yeah… Something had to be missing.

Then, someone very smart or ingenious came up with this explanation: The soul is immortal. When you die, it’s not necessarily over. You get a chance to do it right, in case you did it wrong. Or to try new things, new life styles, new experiences. Sometimes, even by option, learning through suffering. God is so cool She/He will actually let you do it. Give you this opportunity to learn through your mistakes. The trick was, you would have to pass away, go through some sort of souls-only washing machine and then come back. Fresh. In a new body. Untainted. Starting all over again.

Of course it sounded crazy. But, if true, it would explain a lot of the day-to-day injustices we see. Based on this new theory, you could say things like “See that man with that too-rare-to-be-named disease? He might have done something very bad last time he was around…” or “Those who die young are the ones God loves most” (Greek proverb). The entire thing did not sound unfair anymore. There would be a reason behind diseases, suffering, and pain. The reason being “it’s part of a learning process”. And it’s just something you have to do. Just like being in a school, where you have to learn even things you do not like to graduate. This new ‘thing’ was called re-incarnation. Pretty cool, huh?

- Now, let me think for a moment… You mean to say “we all die but come back”?
- Yep.
- Just “lai dat”? (you’d say in good Singlish)
- Yep.
- So, it’s always us around???
- So it seems! Yeah.
- Ok… But… I am confused… If we are always coming back… if it’s always just us… how come the global population is always growing? How can we have more souls coming back than going? If this is a school, shouldn’t be the other way around? As soon as you ‘graduate’ you’re out of here???
- Erm… Well… I mean… Hold on lemme think… … … Geez! I dunno!!!

Are you still reading? Good, because this is exactly where I wanted to get. Some say there is some sort of ‘soul factory’. A place where ‘souls’ are created. Further more, they are not created brand new. They are reconditioned. And what are they made of? Souls, of course!!! The recipe is somewhat like this: You get a soul. You put it through the ‘Soul-o-matic’. The machine analyses the soul’s purity, quality, experiences acquired in the last learning processes etc, then carefully cuts it in half making sure things are well divided and that both halves can exist apart from each other, no problem. Each piece becomes a new ‘old soul’, retaining some of its original characteristics and some of the life experiences it had before. These halves receive a unique symbol they are able to match in case they meet again and then they are named ‘soul mates’. That’s why the population is growing, see? Easy!

The problem is, all separations leave scars and a feeling of absence. And these souls tend to look for each other so as to have the feeling of ‘completeness’ again. It’s almost like a hide-and-seek game, because we never know where the other half will show up. And we play this game until we either find our soul mate or we give up.

And how do we know we found our ‘other half’? “By matching the unique symbol” you’d say! Right! Perfect. But once we are trapped in our physical bodies, it’s really hard to see it. It’s just above the right shoulder, actually; Some funny looking kind of ‘light’, they say. But most of us just cannot see it!!!

Well, there are other ways to identify our soul mates. But, gotta tell ya, it’s not so easy. Since asking would be weird (“Hi, do you happen to be my soul mate?”) and trying out every single person alive is impossible (“Sorry, darling, it’s not you… NEXT!”), we follow our instincts and filter out those souls with characteristics we really think have nothing to do with us. That can also be risky, because we can never tell what part of us was entirely given to the other half, but it’s the best we can do, I guess. It can take quite a while, a life time to be more precise, to find your soul mate. Sometimes you don’t even succeed. And to make the game even more interesting, sometimes you find her and you just don’t realise.

- Say, WHAT??? You find it and don’t realize it?
- Yeah… Sad, ain’t it?
- No! Not sad: Stupid, that is!!!
- It happens…
- But WHY???

You see, once divided, souls are independent. They continue their learning process in different paths, different rhythms, different learning speeds and even different subjects. And sometimes it just happens that when they meet… well, they are not really “ready” to meet.

- Can not, lah!!! So how? What happens, then?
- They let go. Maybe the best thing to do… And they keep searching.
- I’ll never understand… why keep searching if you already found it?
- Hold on! Do not be fooled! There is hardly a guarantee that you actually ‘found’ it. Maybe you were misled by the signals. Maybe you just found some soul that is very compatible to yours (remember, we all come from the same source, Love).
- Yeah, but what if the one you found was reaaaaaally the one you were looking for? Your true, original, reconditioned soul mate?
- In that case, don’t worry. The universe conspires for you two to meet again. And maybe next time, you will both be ready…

And I let him leave with a smile while I ponder if that last statement was really true…