I received a text message the other day from a friend. It said “I bought a soul.” He was referring to his new car, a Kia Soul. Immediately realizing his double entendre, he followed right away with “sounds funny to say it that way.”
That could (should?) have been the end of it, but when one is constantly scanning for blog post fodder …
Souls of the non-material sort, of course, cannot be bought. Souls can be grown, developed, cultivated, shaped, cared for, lifted up. They can also be crushed, brought low and bruised.
In a commodified world such as ours, everything, including a dead human body has a price. The fact that a soul cannot be bought has not stopped people from trying. The quest for happiness, satiation, enlightenment, ecstacy, can be a pure desire of the heart, but it is more often a mad scramble to fill what feels like an empty hole.
In a paradox fit for a riddle, although the soul cannot be bought, it can be sold. The legendary Faust apparently sold his soul to the devil in the 16th century. Blues legend Robert Johnson is rumoured to have done the same in the 20th century.
Each of us is issued one soul. We have the span of a lifetime to ignore it or nurture it. Or sell it.
Over to you.
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