The Soul

The human soul can only be described in regards to what it is not.

The soul cannot be grasped. It is ineffable and unknowable. The soul is not the infinite, though it approximates the boundless. Thus, the soul is beyond true cognition: we may only describe its outline. Like the boundary between childhood and adulthood, the soul is felt in retrospect.

To exist in this world is to suffocate under infinite pressure. This short human existence unfolds beneath the weight of affliction. Even in the most outwardly stable and wealthy neighborhoods, there lives abuse, theft, lies, coercion, the quiet erasure of souls, and other sufferings. Across the world, there lives genocide, famine, and wars. In the personal life, there lives the whispers of eventual death. To truly witness affliction is to stand on the precipice of collapse.

Even in acknowledgement, death remains a fiction of the future tense. Until then, we live in fog, worshipping illusions. In fog, we erect beacons of false idols: career progression, legacy, service, love, art. They do not appear as false idols, but as virtues. Illusion survives in sincerity, not deception. In this heavy fog, any light appears as the path to salvation, often by the self. And so, we stumble towards the light. It is an anesthetic of the soul administered by the self in response to affliction.

Although the soul approximates the boundless, it is a finite resource under infinite pressure. The soul does not draw from the infinite in vitality. Yet even in its weakest state, it remains a slight flicker, and it seems to restore itself through rest. Somehow, the unknowable is capable of withstanding the real.

The human experience deserves compassion, even for those who never question the light of false idols. To die as such is natural and a testament to the fragility of the human capabilities.

Grace is love without possession.

The soul is not owned. Rather, the soul is lent. To grasp towards one's own soul is futile, and to grasp towards another soul is desecration.

Of course, these ideas hinge on a singular premise: the human soul is real, within every person.

Because the soul nears the infinite, I cannot know in full certainty. I may only have faith that this premise holds true.

If I found this premise to be false, I could not continue to live in this suffocating pressure. To deny the soul is to deny the only part of humanity still capable of clean love, also known as grace.