Do You Believe In Soulmates?

Those who were either in a long, steady relationship or married were rather uncomfortable upon hearing the very question when directed to them.

Some people who were curious about my relationship were more taken aback when I told them how it all happened. They seemed to think those sorts of stuff only happened in movies, or we either made it up because we were pulling a prank on them.

I think I tire myself down whenever people ask me about it and I have to keep retelling the same story and they will not believe me when I bandy the words like “soulmates” or “my other half”.

It is typical of them to response;

“How do you know that you’re soulmates?”

“I don’t believe in it. Relationship is hard. It’s all about give and take. Things don’t just happen just like that”

“There’s no way that you don’t dislike any single thing about him. Come on, there’s gotta be something. It’s just not realistic.”

I find it appalling that so many people look into relationships in such a negative and complicated way. That when it comes to having a great relationship they must work so hard and learn to understand each other by reading self-help books about Men from Mars and Women from Venus, compromising the needs and accepting the strengths and weaknesses of each other, tolerating and giving more until there is nothing left.

What appalled me more was that I used to be one of them. And in just a matter of a few precious hours, I was turned a hundred and eighty degrees, as if God was saying to me, “Lookie here, you’ve been traveling the wrong path but now I’m setting you straight. Go forth and tell the others that it is so. It is not too late for them to believe again.”

I know how unsettling it must be when you’re with a partner and as time rolls by, disappointments come and go, realization hit you hard and you find out on your own terms that relationship is a struggle to keep and you’re wondering whether it will get any easier. It breaks my heart to see that even those who are already in a relationship are still feeling empty and lost, and rather than finding the answer to their partners, they turn the other way and behaving as if their partners are strangers who must be studied and understood.

I feel even sorrier for those who are in the search of The One; it seems that it is such a difficult and tremendously time-consuming activity that wears people down because the whole idea of meeting The One is so close to impossible that they usually settle for the next best thing.

Impatience, desperation, the feeling that they’re not getting any younger and pressure from families are what usually driving them to just settle with any one who is good enough, and ignore the most important factor of all; That the person they are settling down with is probably not The One, and the problems that might arise in the future are well ignored and brushed away because they tend to not want to deal with what cannot be seen.

I wish people would have just a little bit more faith and belief that there is someone out there who is made exactly for them, and that by all means, relationship shouldn’t be that hard. I wish people would not just swallow in all the brainwashing thoughts the modern dating world has created for them, because rather than making it easier, it actually goes the other way around.

Just a little bit of faith. That’s all it takes. A little bit of faith that you’re not alone in this world.

That somewhere out there, a person who is your other half, exists and is made for you, waiting for you to believe in them too.

The Beginning of Parental Crime

This term came up when I was having dinner with my boyfriend at a nearby eatery around the Cikarang Baru area. The place was located in a middle-class area and there were scruffy-looking little kids who came around every now and then, begging for money and pretty much annoyed the heck out of us.

It didn’t affect us much until it became a lot more frequent, and bothered us from enjoying our dinner. It was quite tiring, really, flagging our hands off every now and then whenever one of them came to our table and started murmuring something in a pleading voice.

The whole thing might sound cruel and inhumane, considering that our conditions were a lot more fortunate than them, and of course they didn’t choose to be born to beg. But I couldn’t help wondering that perhaps they did it because their parents told them to. When I saw them I wondered where their parents were and I was amazed that they’d let their children roam the streets at night, begging for money from one venue to another. And then it clicked me that the parents were probably sitting comfortably at home, thinking that their kids were the one working their ass off to feed the family.

I told my boyfriend about it, and he agreed, and then goes, “Roughly said, some parents invest in their children the same way they invest money in a property or a business, and they give no options for the children’s own freewill to choose their own paths. They probably don’t realize it, but it’s a crime itself to think that that’s what having children is about.”

Right away I thought about those rich upper-class families who send their children abroad to study business management, e-commerce and the likes just so that the children could expand the family business and triple the profits for the next seventh generations to come. I’ve known some of these children who were in dilemmas – they have their own dreams to pursue, dreams that collide with their parents’ wishes.

It struck me hard to think that these rich parents were no different than those who let their children became beggars in the evenings. The purpose was none other but the same – so that the children are the ones making the money, not them.

“I wonder what the hell were these people thinking when they were having children. Did they just did it and hope for the best or were they not thinking at all?” I said to my boyfriend.

His reply, “I don’t think they have a single clue let alone realise the responsibility of having children. Most people do it because they think it’s the next step to do after they get married. I’ve talked to those who had children, and they said that life was not the same if you never experienced being a parent, and yet they complained about taking care of their own children. It’s funny how they say one thing that contradicts the other. They go around telling people to go have children because it’s great and yet they don’t want to take care of their own – I mean, look at these kids. I’m sure they’re let to beg the streets because their parents didn’t want to take care of them.”

Just the other day, as I was helping out my boyfriend moving out from his old boarding house, I saw a cat giving birth, right in front of the fence, and all the kittens were dead when they came out.

I thought how odd it was that cats breed all the time, uncontrollably, and yet they contribute nothing to the environment. They just exist and multiply but fail to have any sort of purpose or means. Just like how it is with human. They go forth and multiply, and yet their existence causes nothing but to waste more oxygen. All they know is that they have to have children, fill this already over-crowded earth, hoping that these kids would grow up finding their own ways and washing their hands off from the responsibility of parenting.

Besides, there’s always destiny or the society to blame when things go wrong.