Thursday, March 13, 2008

What's the name of your soul?

This is a tough nut to crack, if you can crack it at all.

Our names are given to us. We grow up with them, we grow into them and we get used to them. And when we are addressed by our names, they come to mean so much more than a collection of letters. They get personalized to mean us: our dreams, our unfulfilled wishes, our thoughts, the way we speak, what we look like, our identities. And so each 'Vikram' is different, each 'Priyanka' stands for something else. But if someone were to stop us in the middle of our lives and ask us the name of our soul, what would be the first thought to comes to mind? I've thought about this question so much that I've lost the chance of getting my answer in that one moment, but you should give it a shot.

My answer:
My name is a question mark. Because I'm not very sure of what I am and where I should begin. I'm not too sure of what I think is more important and what actually is more important. I see threads of different colours weaving together to form me, but I don't see them forming any coherent pattern. There's a bit of ambition, a streak of honesty, an inkling of intelligence, and a lot of thought. A general concern for humanity makes a sudden appearance. Then there is this response to music and dance and words and this sensitivity to some of the beauty of this world. There is a concern about people and my interactions with them and a striving to be a better person. Even the liking for physics doesn't seem to encompass a general love for the sciences or a curiosity about how things work and fit together. And then there is the current me. The regrets, the fear, the worry and the doubt. My name? A kaleidoscope: different bits of glass all shaken up to make the most of beauty. I wonder if there is a symmetry, a pattern which I have failed to notice. Or which I can't because I can't look at myself from the outside. The name of my soul? It keeps changing as I shake the kaleidoscope.

No comments: