Soul/ Jennifer Kreizman/ Essay

Soul

Jennifer Kreizman

Soul; the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being, regarded as immortal. Though Oxford has the word defined, the term has no set-in-stone meaning. The word is simply intangible. How can one understand its intricacy if one cannot reach for the soul or feel the soul within one’s palm? With this intangibility, one can define the word time and time again without fear of being wrong. The soul can be used spiritually, lovingly, or even morbidly. The word’s meaning lies solely in how one perceives it and how one chooses to deal with it. The philosopher Heraclitus stated that, “You could never arrive at the limits of the soul, no matter how many roads you traveled. So deep is its mystery.” So possibly, it’s not that the word is undefinable, but rather, the term can carry many faces.

Soul is often poetic in literature, leaving warm connotations on your tongue no matter how cold the sentence may be. The term is used to define levels of depth that can be formed in relationships, so much so that it involves the soul, the innermost essence, of a being. While it can seem cliche or worn out, the word is used to personify the perplexity of human nature. A quote in the book Song of Achilles makes use of the word in this way; when talking about the depths of his love, Patroclus states, “He is half of my soul, as the poets say.” While the sentence is used in the context of Achilles’ soon death, the statement adds new depth to the word while adding new depth to their relationship. The word here shows that not only is the soul your innermost essence, but it can join people to a further degree, to a state where even the soul is shared. Another person to define the word similarly was the philosopher Aristotle. He once said, “What is a friend? A

single soul dwelling in two bodies.” While the word in this context seems optimistic, it also can be flipped to the negative. What happens when the other part of your soul is gone? The depth of that relationship can bring both an abundance of positivity and negativity, though both don’t lie in your control. The word in this milieu blurs the lines of sadness and smiles, merely making it synonymous with “and they were more than this, they were that.”

The word can also be used spiritually. For instance, if you walk into a synagogue, church, mosque, or any other religious temple, and ask someone in there to define “soul,” the definition would likely be connected to their religion. If someone feels a strong connection to religion or relies on religion to settle their worries, it makes sense for them to define a complex word in that context. If the thought of God helps you sleep at night, why wouldn’t you use God to understand a concept so above you? The soul is the second part of your being. The soul is the light in a lantern. That’s usually what a religious figure will tell you. The soul is what God granted you to complete his plan. Even if one doesn’t have a belief in God, one can still believe in the soul. Many would find contentment in this definition, seeing that the soul is nothing more than just you, but some find it more puzzling. If God granted your soul, and your soul was a gift, is your soul not your own?

Another visage of the word spins it in a way where it’s genuinely out of your hands. The soul can also be defined as the part you have no control over, your raw entity. Many psychologists will tell you that everyone puts up a front. Whether

it’s an armored shield or a feeble cloth, we naturally try to hide our realities. Instinctually, we tend to hide this soft space of vulnerability; we harden the outside and keep the certitude of our minds hidden away safely. This soft spot, this gated essence, is one’s soul. With this definition, it seems that you ultimately have no control over yourself. Can you be labeled an odious man if your soul was tarnished to begin with? How much of yourself is in your control? Does your soul have the ability to change?

Though we can define the word countless times, the definition is merely your own interpretation in numerous criteria. The word is meant to describe something that is simply far beyond what our brains can comprehend. How are we supposed to understand something that fundamentally makes no sense? It isn’t easy. So we use the word to demonstrate the depths of love, our loyalty to God, and our raw nature, though we can use it in innumerably more ways. We explain the soul to be ourselves, it’s a part of us that we would be nothing without, and the soul, too, would be nothing without the body. A Native proverb says, “The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.” The soul is simply a counterpart of the being, but the questions come in when we are asked to define the word at a more elevated level, since who genuinely knows what the soul is?