This was one of those papers I pulled an all-nighter for and I completely regret it. I think I could have done really well, but hopefully this paper is at least coherent =/. If you can put my crappy writing aside, you'll learn a lot about me and some of my beliefs. It's really on the personal side for an academic paper (and it is supposed to be), but since no one reads my blog I'm not too worried. =] p.s. sorry for the weird formatting. I couldn't figure out the html code to make it look right =/

Meaning of Life: Final Paper

Everyone has beliefs that help them make sense of the world: Ancient Chinese people believed in yin and yang, Buddhists believe in karma, and some people just believe in fate and destiny. All of these beliefs help people understand the world in a way that makes sense to them. Ancient Greeks had a God for every major aspect of life that helped them make sense of why hurricanes happened, or why someone had bad luck in finding love. Many of these beliefs, or at least remnants of these beliefs still exist today along with many other views of the world. All of these views help people make sense of the world around them, and help them feel like they have a greater purpose and give meaning to their life. I have many views and beliefs that give meaning to my life by shaping how I think about myself as well as others, and affect how I influence people around me—one of these beliefs is the idea of soul mates. I’ve always believed in soul mates to a certain extent, but I never really understood how they could exist. The day I had a long conversation with a good friend, I learned the Judaic beliefs about soul mates, and from then on I knew that they had to exist.

There are many different beliefs about soul mates, but one thing they all have in common is that soul mates are two people who are meant to be together. According to Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok, who analyzes the concept of soul mates in the Torah and Kabbalah, when God creates a soul he creates its counterpart in another by having them share a soul and these two people are made perfectly for each other, and have a connection so strong that it is possible for them to find each other on earth. Tzadok also describes that in the writings of the Ari'zal, when a soul is reincarnated their partner is reincarnated as well and through each life on earth when the person commits a sin they tarnish their soul as well as their partner’s, and begin to lose their connection to their soul mate. Over each life on earth the connection between the soul mates continues to diminish and when this happens it is possible for soul mates to end up with other people. This way of thinking of soul mates gives me a different perspective in the way I think about relationships, and compliments views of the world that I already have.

The idea of soul mates is appealing to me because it helps me make sense of the world, and it supports my personal philosophies of life. I believe in fate with some revisions, as well as all the important events in my life happen for a reason. I believe in soul mates because I like the idea that there is someone out there that I’m meant to spend my life with, and that because of fate I will find them. This belief is much more promising than the alternative which would be believing that it is my responsibility to find someone to spend my life with, and then taking the risk that the relationship could end badly, and that every relationship in my life would be no different. The idea of soul mates also supports my belief that if a relationship doesn’t work out then those two people were not right for each other. My belief in soul mates affects how I analyze the world around me, because I find evidence of soul mates in many aspects of life.

The day I learned about soul mates from the Judaic point of view is the day I truly gained another view of the world. I have always tried to be a good person, and I have always believed in both fate and freewill, which sounds contradictory, but actually is just another paradox. I believe that everyone has a certain destiny, but that through the series of choices someone makes throughout their life they can stray away from what they could have been. The Judaic theory of soul mates coincides with this because everyone is made with a soul mate, but through sin over the ages the connection between the soul mates diminishes and they stray away from who they should have been with. I feel that as long as I am being a good person and making good choices I will be who I am supposed to be, and be with the person that I am supposed to be with. That day my belief in soul mates fell into place and created a view of the world that makes sense to me.

Even though many people, especially American’s do not actively believe in soul mates they believe in true love and they believe that it is possible to find someone they could spend the rest of their life with. There is evidence of this all across American culture— movies, books, television, dating websites, and more convincingly, stories of happy marriages that have never failed. This belief throughout American culture heavily affects the individuals within this culture, and as a result affects individual’s narratives and how they define themselves and the world around them. According to Jerome Bruner in “Life as Narrative,” our social environment shapes the way we think as well as the way we talk to people, which are two ways that directly lead to the structuring of our narratives. These processes structure the way we tell stories because they give guidelines on how to perceive experiences, and organize memory into the events that give meaning to who we are today. The idea of true love that surrounds American culture, along with other subcultures present in my life, has given me guidelines on how to perceive soul mates: the day I learned about soul mates I was able to categorize the event in a way that gives meaning to who I am today. As I get older and progress to new stages of my life, my views of the world will shift, but this event will always have a role in the narrative I tell myself as well as other people.

The idea of soul mates plays an important role in my current stage of life, described by Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. I am twenty years old, and according to Erikson I am at stage six in my life: “Love: Intimacy vs. Isolation.” My history and beliefs all have a large role in the current stage of my life. The main question that is being asked in this stage is, will I share my life with someone or will I live life without a partner? Since I believe that I am a good person deserving of love, and have hopefully established my identity as Erikson says is needed to make a long-term commitment others, if I found my soul mate I would with out a doubt be willing to form a relationship. The idea of soul mates adds meaning to my life because it gives me a sense of certainty about my future, and helps me make sense of why relationships fail, for this reason I am on the intimacy side of Erikson’s sixth stage rather than the isolation end. I was pushed further down the path toward intimacy by the idea of soul mates, but this was only possible because of the social context of that day which allowed my conversation to take place.

Besides the fact that I was with good friends whom I feel comfortable around, as they do around me, there is a deeper social context that surrounded the moment that enabled the conversation to take place. As everyone knows through experience, topics of discussion are set by the social standards and etiquette of that culture. College as a microcosm of American culture, is still influenced by these standards, but is not restrained by them. America as a whole is considerably diverse and if not accepting, then at least tolerant of many different beliefs, but those of us in college discuss all those things that are not polite to discuss at the dinner table. Not only do we avidly discuss controversial topics, but we discuss abstract, confusing, and sometimes obscure things. For this reason approaching a topic such as soul mates that many people don’t believe in, is not in the least bit difficult. Individuals of all social, ethnic, economic, and religious backgrounds help to form the college community. Many classes also promote the discussion of “taboo” topics to expand and change people’s outlook. The manner in which we discuss these topics is also not set by the standards of American society (although American society provides the list for us to choose from), but more by the group of individuals contributing— it can be anything from the Socratic method, to Robert’s rules of order, to a trial, to a shouting match. The openness of the college community allowed my friend to explain many of the intricacies and complexities of soul mates, and although he may not even believe in them, I certainly do. The underlying social context allowed this event to happen, but previous and current happenings in my life made it possible for me to contribute to the moment, and allow this event to happen.

My self-told autobiography is a short one, as I am only twenty years old and the major events in my life that I say have made me who I am today are sparse. I have grown up with a mother and a father, and a sister who is nine years older than me. I have been raised believing that I can do absolutely anything I set my mind to, and that as long as I am a good person and am grateful to God, he will help me when I ask. My mom was a smoker since the age of fifteen, and as a child I always tried to persuade her to quit. At 11 I was diagnosed with Lupus, a serious disease and my parents were distraught. A year later doctors told me I had been misdiagnosed. That same day my mom quit smoking, when I asked why she told me that she prayed to God and told him that if he took away my Lupus she would stop smoking forever. She hasn’t had a cigarette since.

That same year, while in college my sister moved out to live wither her boyfriend at the age of twenty. Of course my parents were heartbroken, and sixth months later she moved back in after the relationship ended. Two months later she found out she was pregnant. Soon after she dropped out of college and got a job so she could support herself and her baby. She always wanted to be a teacher, but instead she ended up working in jewelry retail, and still does.

A couple years later, I’m fourteen and my cousin Savannah was taken away from her father by social services for abuse, little did we know he did much more than that. I was grateful that we could give her a safe place to call home, but she was nothing like me or even my sister. The abuse done to her from such an early age gave her many mental and emotional set backs making her behavior intolerable. We helped her progress a great deal, but after two years and an attempt at suicide, we decided she needed more help than we were capable of, so we found her a place that dealt with children who went through similar trauma, and had access to resources that we didn’t. She is now eighteen, attending college, and trying to make something out of her life, and is significantly happier than I remember.

The last and most current event of my self-told autobiography, which more closely related to my idea of soul mates is the end of my past relationship. Like any other hormone-raged adolescent, at the age of 16 I had my first boyfriend. We stayed together for three years, and didn’t even have our first fight until after one. My parents loved and adored him as much as I did, which was a good sign since they never liked a single one of my sister’s boyfriends. His parents were anything but fond me, but I managed to stay polite. During the last six months or so of our relationship, problems were more present than not. I ended things because I found out he lied about things I consider unforgivable. I decided we could remain friends, but soon after that I found out that he was lying about much more than I knew about. I confronted him and haven’t talked to him since.

All of these things, along with many other events have all confirmed my belief that everything happens for a reason, and as long as we make the right choices we will be who we are meant to be, and end up with who we are meant to be with. I believe I was diagnosed with Lupus not only to make me grow and appreciate life, but to help my mom quit smoking. I believe my sister made a decision that strayed her from what she could have been, and that most of the decisions she had made up to that point were not the best ones. I believe that Savannah coming to live with us helped us all grow as people and I believe we made the right decision in sending her to get more help, because her life is turning out well. I believe that my relationship ended because we were not right for each other, and although he made bad decisions I believe that we would not have ended up together even under great circumstances, and if we made a bad decision and to stay together we would have ended up with each other and not the people who we were meant to be with. These events, and how I think about them and tell them to others shape the way I see myself: a good person who tries to make the best decisions possible, so that fate can steer my in the right direction. The events that I include in my narrative give evidence for my beliefs, which makes my life feel meaningful. Most people believe their life has some sort of meaning, simply because most things in American culture have a meaning, or point.

Books, movies, television shows, websites, and even daily conversations all have some point or goal. Most people don’t ramble about unrelated events without having a point to make. Who would want to hear a story that was completely lack of meaning, or plot? For this reason, people believe there is a point to their life, and that there are things that make it meaningful. To help make the point of our stories clear, we have to use a standard structure or framework so that our audience understands where we’re coming from and where we’re going. In “Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds” Holland describes theory of scaffolding. Scaffolding is a learned structure that is developed over time and is created from the interaction of the learned story form, actual events, and the group agenda. Scaffolding can be thought of as the process of learning a new framework in which to tell a narrative. Holland describes how new AA members learn to scaffold by reinterpreting the previous story and linking it to their own story, as time goes on they learn what is appropriate and what is not important when telling their story. In a larger sense, everyone in American culture learns how to scaffold by using the framework set up by American culture and forming their own narrative, so while people may not know the meaning to their life, it is easy to see that it has meaning simply based on the way they tell their narrative.

My belief in soul mates which directly relates to my overall view of the world— every event that happens is a stepping stone leading to who I am supposed to be, assuming I choose to stay on that path. American culture along with my family and other figured worlds provide me with a basic scaffold in which I learn that my life has meaning. The events in my life give me evidence to support theories I have about the world and about myself. These theories or beliefs help me shape my identity and in turn my self-told autobiography. As the events in my life accumulate and I continue to analyze them and tell them to myself and other people, the meaning of my life will continue to change, or as I like to think of it, become more clear.