Reassembling Your Soul

Every so often, I spend a cou­ple of hours reassem­bling my soul. Some­times there are weeks or months between those times, some­times mere hours or days. Events hap­pen to us that cause us to for­get who we are and where we have been in life. We stop telling our­selves the sto­ries about our lives from a sym­pa­thetic point of view. In fact, we begin to ignore our own sacred sto­ry­line altogether.

One of the things I do to put the pieces back together is to play music from my child­hood. It does not take all that long. I don’t even have to play the whole song. A few lines here and there is all it takes. Some songs I will play sev­eral times. For what­ever rea­son, my soul will pick one that needs to be heard deeply. Lately, I have gone all the way back to the Everly Broth­ers, Peter and Gor­don, and Petula Clark. There is some­thing about midlife that makes child­hood songs richer.

All of life can be ther­a­peu­tic, if you view it that way. In an age of shat­tered social real­i­ties, reassem­bling the soul becomes a pri­or­ity. I also use pho­tos of places that are majes­tic or famil­iar. It only takes an hour to do a pretty good job of con­nect­ing with the visual cues in your life that some­how help heal you.

Telling your­self the same sto­ries from dif­fer­ent angles can also be help­ful. Step out­side of your own col­lec­tion of life-stories and see them in a dif­fer­ent light. Re-tell the sto­ries from the view­point of a nov­el­ist. You may be the unrec­og­nized hero of your own story. Use a lit­tle sym­pa­thetic imag­i­na­tion and see if you do not feel bet­ter after a while.

Most of all, have respect for what­ever that is inside of us that can do all of these won­der­ful things. It lives per­pet­u­ally after our phys­i­cal bod­ies cease func­tion­ing. Look at your life through its eyes and feel the pieces come together.