Can A Wounded Heart Heal Through Time? A Soul's Journey May Tell.

Can a soul--one with a wounded heart--escape the accumulated experiences of a lifetime, release them, and then go on its way?

I asked myself this very question after a viewing a moving animated film called Kimagure Orange Road, Summer's Beginning. Kimagure has been a franchise in Japan for quite a while, going back the late eighties and early nineties.

While a plethora of anime' titles deal with everything from intergalactic conflict to the essential battle robot scenery, the Kimagure Orange Road franchise deals with affairs of the human heart, primarily through it's three protagonists, Kyosuke, Hikaru, and Madoka. I don't really want to get too tightly focused on Kimagure Orange Road here, I just wanted to say that it is the most moving animated series of any that I have ever watched, and whilst watching, it brought back memories. . .

Enter the opening question about a soul's wounded heart.

The question may be a bit broader than perhaps first thought, if it is considered closely and thoughtfully. This is deep stuff and I don't expect everybody to 'get it.' Still, it's not unbearably hard to fathom, and I feel a distinct need to...well...'get it out.'

A friend of mine, one that's very close, once told me a story. It was the story about a man, who, when reflecting on his life of forty years, suddenly realized that he had a knack for bringing up nearly photographic memories of his past, something he had not been able to do before. It was then that this man thought to himself: "What if I could change my past? What would I do? More importantly, what would I do differently? Would I interact with the same people, only in a different way? Would I choose new people, and change my entire spectrum of friends, all together?"

These things the man pondered, until he could ponder them no more. The man was tired after this exercise, and had to wait a few days before he was able to consider these questions at any length again. When he was rested, a few days later, he went back to this pondering. The questions seemed primal to him, for he was considering that the ability to relive--in his mind--the events of his past might just one day be so real so as to allow him to 'step back' in time for a while, to interact with his past.

One day, during an especially vivid memory, he was able to do this, and it scared him. He found himself face to face with a love interest from his past, only this time, it wasn't in his past, it was in what was now, his present, relative to his position in time. The present he had left was his future, and the past he had traveled to was his present, at least for the moment he was there.

Considering that he was now able to interact with the past he had envisioned interacting with, he realized what that ramifications of this meant: He could change his past!

But wait! What was that calling to him from the place he had just left? He felt an overwhelming burst of emotion rush over him, seemingly begging him to return to the place he had left. He knew what it was, and became even more scared when he realized that although he was where he wanted to be, he knew that if he took this path, there might not be any turning back, and he might not even be able to remember the future that he left.

The Love-he-had-before, stood in front of him, beckoning him to her, but the man could not move. He was dumbfounded at what he had done, was even surprised that he did it in the first place, and realized that this gift was also somewhat unsettling if not dangerous, to himself. The man had always been an upstanding person, careful in his deliberations with relationships. Honesty pervaded his being and his moral training came to him as if to say: "Think of your loved ones."

He bowed to the love-interest in front of him, then indicated that he had learned his lesson. The love-interest bowed in return, then disappeared in a flash of brilliant white light. The man, too, was engulfed, and found himself standing before his bedroom mirror, the place he had been standing when the vivid memory caused him to be transported back in time.

The man looked at himself in the mirror: He seemed a bit different, but he could not put it to words, at first. Then it came to him. He said inwardly: "I am who I am because of all my past experiences, each one moving with, cascading into, and having become part of the others, to make up the whole of what I am now. All my experiences, all my relationships, all the things that make up what I call 'me' is as it should be--because I experienced them the way I did, all the way up to now, in this moment."

The man thought of the love-interest from his past that had appeared before him. It occurred to him that he didn't now remember that person as a love-interest, but that is what she had been to him during sojourn back in time.

There was a long pause. Then the 'Ah Ha!' aspect of the experience reverberated through his being. That so-called 'love-interest' was his soul, showing itself to him in a form he could understand. He knew what it meant, and suddenly, his life was changed from within. He could go back in time if he wanted to. The memories were there, just as vivid as before. Perhaps, he thought, he should take a real loved one along with him--perhaps his wife--so she could share in his past. Maybe he could teach the technique to others.

A feeling of concern uprooted the man from his current line-of-thought: it came through him from his inner self, as if it was talking to him through a long tunnel. It said, simply, "Experience, Know W hat Is Truly Real, and Know!" "Learn, Learn, Learn!"

This message was not lost on the man, and he knew what could be done if he wanted to. He also knew that he had reponsibility to not hurt the feelings of others, and be faithful to them, as well. This made the man a bit more purplexed about his position in the universe-at-large, but he also knew it made him more than he had been.

The man then went downstairs to have dinner with his wife.

The moral, if any, of this story is this: Be who you are. Know who you are. Learn who you are and where you came from, before you appeared on Life's Scene. Know where you've been, why you're here now, and where you're going. It isn't enough to just go along in life, one must experience to get anything of any real lasting value to take with you when you depart this mortal coil.

Live, however, as if this is the only place you need to be, for--whatever it's worth--it probably is.

No Suggestions, Only Love. Be Well My Friends.
Respectfully, Stephen