“By choosing your thoughts, and by selecting which emotional currents you will release and which you will reinforce, you determine the quality of your light. You determine the effects that you will have upon others, and the nature of the experiences of your life.”
“Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.”
— The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (b. 23 March 1900)
“Depression is something that doesn’t just go away. It’s just there … and you deal with it … and you stay out of situations that are going to trigger it.”
Right off the bat, I want to make it adamantly clear that the term “old souls” has no actual basis in psychology. Regardless, the phenomenon of “old souls” does exist, as many mothers and nurses in the maternal ward will tell you. The idea of “old souls” varies depending on who you’re talking to. Some say that old souls are merely children that seem much more mature than their age would indicate. Others see old souls in a much more spiritual light, and believe that these individuals have lived many past lives on this earth, and seem to draw upon that knowledge and experience daily. For these people, a belief in reincarnation is almost always present.
While the idea of old souls has been dismissed by many as pseudoscience, it’s hard to deny the existence of old souls when you see them. Some of the firmest believers in the existence of old souls are the nurses who help deliver babies in hospitals. These healthcare professionals see more babies than perhaps anyone else, and they notice the subtle differences in these newborns that others might miss. Many of these nurses will tell you that certain babies exhibit strange characteristics when they’re born, almost as if they’ve been born many times before and it’s nothing new to them…
While being an old soul can have its advantages, it can also have its downsides. Many old souls have trouble with relationships. In addition, many people who date old souls can tell you that it’s very difficult to make things work with them. But why is this? Is there any hope for these old souled individuals? These are the questions we set out to answer today.
1. Old Souls Often Come From Single Parent Households
While the term “old soul” might not be used in psychology, there is another term that is closely related. This term is “pseudomature.” This word refers to children, teens, or young adults that appear much more mature than their age might indicate. These children are often trying to….
One time when he was 18, he was fishing and found a baby salamander someone had tried and failed to use as bait. It had a huge gash in its side and didn’t look like it would make it. He put it in the bucket he was going to put fish in and took it home, then performed “surgery” on the little guy to mend the gash. It couldn’t move, so my dad fed it and nursed it back to health until the gash was healed. Since he’d taken it in as a baby, it wasn’t equipped to stay alive in the wild, so he kept it in a giant aquarium next to his bed. It stayed alive until my sister was born six years later.
His dad took him deer hunting once when he was in middle school. They hunted all day and never saw a single deer. At the end of the day as the sun was setting, they found one, and my dad yelled at my grandpa not to shoot it because it didn’t deserve to die. He hasn’t been deer hunting since.
Two people I used to be best friends with don’t have stable parents. My dad takes them out for lunch and out fishing regularly, and even though I am not friends with either of them anymore, he still makes time for them as if they were his own kids.
Sometimes I catch him crying at videos of dogs on the internet.
One time he was crying and I asked him what was wrong and he gave me a hug and said there isn’t always a reason. I’ve held on to that.
He told me that if (if) he dies, he wants to die by being drowned in a horde of puppies because otherwise, what’s the point?
He makes sure to say “I love you” to my mom and me every day, because he once told me he never once heard it from his parents as a kid.
Saw my mom looking at a bird, so he found out what kind of bird it was and drew a picture of it for her.
Heard me crying after a hard day and brought me a box of milk duds, because even though I’m lactose intolerant, it was an occasion on which they were needed.
Shows me every day that men who feel allowed to be open, vulnerable, soft, and emotional are so much happier than men who are told to keep it all inside.