Dear Soulmate: An Open Letter to My Better Half

Dear Soulmate,

Forgive me if I sound rude, but I must be honest with you when I say that I often doubt your existence. The idea of a soul existing in some eternally-generating haze that is spliced in two and thrust into two separate bodies that will somehow stumble upon each other due to some cosmic aligning of the stars sounds sounds far-fetched to me. Don't get me wrong; I like the idea of you immensely. In fact, I've spent many hours writing you songs and poems that I will one day use to woo you. However, the issue behind my belief in your nonexistence lies largely in the fact that I am not a Calvinist. If I believed in predestination, then believing in you would be a foregone conclusion.

If I believed in predestination, our love story would be perfect. We would meet doing missions work at an orphanage in India, and you would fall madly in love with my handsome... character. Love itself would be blind. As such, I wouldn't notice the fact that you were incredibly hot and would instead constantly dwell on your... Godliness. At dusk, we would hold hands and walk through the streets of Mumbai, smiling at all the dark-haired children scavenging in the trash for their next meal. We would return to the United States and get married in a white country chapel. At our reception, we would slow dance to "I Want You To be My Love" by Over the Rhine. My arms would be wrapped around your waist, as I gently whisper in your ear my undying love. We would honeymoon at the neighborhood Motel 6, as they would have left the light on for us all these years. I would get a job at the local Kinkos, and you would listen to me complain day-by-day as I came home from work. My gym membership would come into good use, because I would constantly be working on my physique to stay as sexually appealing as possible. At age forty, I would support you as you ran for the Mrs. Tennessee pageant. You wouldn't win, in part due to your commitment to our sixteen children, but I would convince you that the judges were bribed by the surgically enhanced Canadian contestant and would comfort you. Nine months later, we would welcome our seventeenth child into the world with moderate excitement. At age seventy-nine, I would pass away unexpectedly after four years of hiding my pancreatic cancer from you. At my funeral, our eighteenth child would offer a stirring eulogy in my honor. You would place a single white rose and the bundle of love letters I wrote on my casket as tears fell from your eyes--only I wouldn't be able to brush them away this time.

But I'm not a Calvinist. Goodbye, nice thoughts!

Reality is, the idea of a soulmate itself is quite troublesome. Given the Bible, I just don't see any real support for the idea. I'm nearly certain that Walt Disney, Jane Austen, and Mr. Hallmark invented it in a boardroom meeting as a stroke of marketing genius. Throw the polygamy from the Bible into the mix, and it's even harder to argue for soulmates. I mean, it's easy to figure out who the soulmate is in Jacob's Leah-Rachel relationship. However, once you throw a couple concubines into the tent, things really get crazy!

You see, I'm torn. The romantic side of me really wants to believe we'll meet in that orphanage in Mumbai, but the realistic side of me says I'll probably bump into you at a Pilot gas station somewhere south of Mobile Alabama. At that point, things will get really awkward because I won't quite be sure what to call you. I mean, I couldn't call you my soulmate because I would still stubbornly cling to your nonexistence. Therefore, I would be stuck affectionately referring to you as "bestie." After all, there is no predestined, cosmic aligning of the stars that has to arrange for you to meet your best friend. Thus, with the whole soulmate concept firmly off the table, we would live a life of happiness knowing that there was absolutely no divine intervention in our relationship.

Problem is, I don't like that thought. Though it may counter all of my reasoning, I actually quite like the idea of you. I mean, it's probably ridiculous and will never really happen, but I still like the thought of you. I guess that's why I'm writing you this post in hopes that you will one day you will stumble upon it by sheer accident some day during a game of chess with your brother. More than likely, you will have just captured your brother's queen. Due to his ongoing anger issues, he will throw the board across the room in a fit of rage at which point the pawns and the rooks will conspire to land sequentially on your open laptop keyboard and type "Daniel Diffenderfer Solemate," and a stray knight will Google it. Despite the rook's lack of ability to spell, the Google spell checker will providentially catch the error and redirect you here. Welcome, bestie.

The more I think about it, I think I might just convert to being a Calvinist. It would make things a lot easier all the way around. And this note wouldn't be half as long.

Love,
Daniel