Old and New Souls
A man sits on his back porch and ponders a few questions about the universe. Recently, the man has read a few texts regarding Eastern religions and popular Zen Buddhist texts. The man had started to question his faith. He never necessarily had blind faith in the Western dogmas, but for some reason was very drawn toward the Eastern ones.
A main topic is the idea of reincarnation. Some strange synchronicities have occurred in recent months that had made the man start to question the faith that was instilled in him since he was a child. He did not have a choice when he was a child. He thought about how sad that really was. Every child was at the mercy of the caregiver. Some got lucky, some didn’t; that’s just how the world seemed to work. The man could not explain the synchronicities, so he picked up the Buddhist text to find an answer.
The man set down his book on a small table next to him on the porch. He remembered something his friend said to him at a party.
“I think this might be my first time through, ya know, through life in general.”
The man did not respond to his friend right away; he stood and nodded in agreement and cataloged the sentence deep into the back of his subconsciousness for later reflection. The reflection was occurring now.
The man believed he was quite inept in science and the scientific process. He grabbed his journal that was underneath the small table on a bottom shelf and opened it to a new page. He began to lay the ideas on paper.
If reincarnation is real, how many souls are there that recycle and come back again into the third dimension? What is the ratio of recycled souls to new ones being created from the universe’s matter and energy? There are almost 8.5 billion people on the planet Earth; the man concluded that new souls must outweigh the old souls.
The smaller percentage of old souls are outnumbered and are getting increasingly harder to find. This thought scared the man as he wrote it down. He stopped writing and questioned whether he himself was a new or old soul. Did it really matter at all? The universe is so indifferent to these types of things.
Was the ratio of old and new souls correlated to the progression of the human race?
The man leaned back in his porch chair and placed his hands on the back of his head. The front chair legs were now off the ground, swaying like a pendulum. He stared out into the backyard. The trees and planted vegetation were still in the night. He saw porch lights turn on in the neighborhood’s backyards. The neighborhoods always did this at 9 p.m. The sun was barely hanging on in the sky. The clouds, though sparse, flew high in the sky at a leisurely pace. Nothing was in a hurry; that was all right with the man. The world was moving too fast anyway. How did anyone have time to question the reality they traverse anyway?
The man’s mother had always said to him, “Don’t worry, honey, you’re an old soul. I can see it in you.” The man replayed the way his mother told him this in a loop. He began to second-guess the statement. Was his mother an old soul, or was it a new soul being seasoned by years of life experience? Again, did it really matter?
Do old souls have a leg up in life? Did new souls struggle more than old souls? Maybe that was true. The old souls have wise internal dialogue going at all times. The old souls have a divine, intuitive spokesperson helping guide their way through life.
Is life moving too fast to even gauge new souls and old souls? Is there a test some strange, misunderstood person created to figure this all out? But what would happen if souls started to get categorized? Would new souls be treated differently from old souls? Would old souls become elders of the land and dictate to the masses what they have inside them?
The man then started to think if old souls were more prevalent in the past, or if that was just a misconception—confusion from a nostalgic mind wishing they didn’t grow up so fast. Everyone wished they could go back to a time when it all felt simpler. They don’t know that simpler times could be on the horizon and that the world has always been this complex.
How do you gauge if old souls have more wisdom anyway? What makes them smarter than the new, fresh soul finding ideas for themselves in the complexity and indifference of the infinite universe? There are a million little questions; you can answer them all night and find yourself not understanding anything at all. The man planted the chair legs back onto the porch. He stamped his feet and rose. He walked into the backyard and sat cross-legged under an oak tree.
Maybe the old souls held the human race back with old ways of thinking. Old souls had more fear and happiness to pull from. They understood the emotional spectrum better than new souls. That’s why it was so hard for them to look onward and let go.
Does the human race need more old souls spawning from the collective, or do we need to bypass the old, stagnant pool and find fresh waters to soul-fish for the ones that will help drive the human race down the path of righteousness? There is a finish line long hidden in the future. Why do the souls want to cross the finish line? What’s the rush? Once finished, you’re finished; there is nothing left. What are we striving to get to so damn fast?
All souls, old and new, must push that finish line back as far as they can and pave the road behind them for the others to catch up if they so please.
All souls are equal in terms of purpose. The purpose is to push off the finish line and find shiny objects in the road that attract your attention. Gaze and admire the shiny objects because there aren’t many of them on the road.
The man looked to the sky past the spiraling branches of the oak tree. Stars had a hard time sparkling through the light pollution. It didn’t matter because the man knew they were still there, waiting.
-10/15/2025