Thoughts of the Past, Dreams of the Future

The green and black flag

Love - the most coveted, most highly valued feeling in our universe. Some spend decades looking for it. Some spend their days trying to fight it. But love always wins, and it always catches up with man, no matter how fast he runs, and where he hides. And besides, it’s not like love is hard to find - your soulmate is literally tied to you, with a thick, red string.

I live in a society where it’s expected of you to drop everything and seek out your other half the moment your string appears. You are expected to leave your home and follow its pull to the other end. Parents save up for their kids' trip, relatives chip in. Sometimes it seems to be more important to them than a university education. It’s seen almost as a coming of age ritual, like a bar mitzvah or something. Of course, no-one can see your string except for you and your soulmate, so it would be pretty easy to lie about it, but I don’t think anyone ever did. It's a common belief that you can’t lie about strings, or that you’re not supposed to, no matter what. It’s seen as plain decency.

You can imagine my confusion when my string appeared. Thick and scarlet, wrapped tightly around my middle finger. I told my parents and started packing. My clothes, books, the green and black flag I kept hidden in a drawer. I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the end of my string. Proof of my identity? Something that would question it? All I knew was I had no desire to sit around and try to ignore the most powerful force in the universe. Besides, it’d find me eventually.

I loaded my stuff into the trunk of my car, the minivan I got from my parents to commemorate the occasion, and started driving in the direction the string was indicating. I passed a few borders, had a few run-ins with anti-destiny protesters in western Germany, and inevitably stopped at the western shore of France, my string indicating a course further due west. The string wanted me to sail to America, so I boarded a ferry, and, in some time, found myself off the coast of NYC.

I’d never been in the USA before, but my string seemed to know exactly where it was going. It got excited, and started pulling me forward, through confusing alleyways and bustling streets. It eventually stopped in front of an old block of apartments. I got in and walked up the stairs. First, second, third… The string led me to apartment nr. 12, on the fourth floor. I knocked timidly on the door.

What is love? Invisible to the eye, unmeasurable by any existing scale. Unquantifiable. Untraceable. And yet, people are ready to lay down their lives for it. People seek it, actively, progressively. Gender doesn’t matter for it, age doesn’t matter for it. Heck, reality doesn’t matter for it, for who could say they felt no love for any work of fiction? It has a complete disregard for the barriers of life and death, proceeding past the grave, past decades and centuries. When people speak of love, singing odes and writing elegies, they most often idolise love of a romantic nature. But the Greek philosophers and romantic poets had the right idea. There is not one love, and love is not bound by the definitions of our society. We used to see only love between a man and a woman as valid. Now we know that gender is nothing in comparison to the most powerful force in the universe. And yet, we limit ourselves by the idea that you can only love a partner romantically. What for the love between a mother and her child? A sister and her brother? Two friends? The love you have for the human race? Are those truly lesser than that you deify, than romance?

“Coming!” I heard a high pitched voice on the other side of the door and my heart fluttered a tiny bit. The door opened, and I saw my soulmate, and she saw me. Our eyes met, and a sort of mutual understanding fleed between us. The red string wrapped itself tighter and higher, covering now my whole arm. She let me in, and put the kettle on.

“I was expecting you.” She said after a moment. “I knew I couldn’t hide from destiny, it’s impossible. And yet…” She looked wistfully out the window.

“I didn’t entirely know what to expect either,” I said. “I came here, because it’s what was expected of me.” She smiled at me.

“Tell me about yourself.” I did so. We joked for hours, and if I am to be honest, I had the time of my life. Never before did I feel that someone understood me quite so deeply, so honestly, so rawly. “I have to tell you something though,” She sighed. “Or… perhaps it’s better I show you.” She lead me upstairs, and takes a flag out of her drawer. A green and black flag. My eyes widened. I slowly reached into my pocket and took out my flag. The same flag - the green and black flag. She smiled at me and I laughed. 

Screw romance. I had finally found my person.