Samir Shukla
By Samir Shukla
Ah, the month of love. Many hearts, along with flower, chocolate, and greeting card merchants and of course restaurant owners, grow fonder in the lovely month of February.
Sure, matters of love and attachments glow the whole year, but this short, sweet month is the king of such reminders. Some guy named Saint Valentine has made sure of that, and the American marketing savvy has now made this an international boom for one and all.
February also keeps itself short, I think to help springtime approach a little quicker.
A recent conversation with a friend, about relational matters, turned up the word soulmates. It is a word often heard in matters of the heart and emotions. Those oh so human needs.
The movies have put the word soulmates up in lights. See, there it is on the marquee. The film starts and is colored with drama and music, the protagonists cast as soulmates from the beginning or become one by the end credits. I get it. It’s a word that makes people giddy and wishful for their own social fortunes. Of course, as you walk out of that movie house with eyes glazed, the real-world smacks you.
You know I’ve got a stinker of a movie plot for you, there is no such thing as soulmates.
Even in a philosophical sense, it’s a clueless word, creating unrealistic expectations and false hopes. Creating a sense of comparison in people that is at best disappointing and at worst empty.
In my now six decades around the block on this floating blue marble, I have never met two people who are soulmates, even though some may claim to be. Soul and mate are two lovely words that don’t make a better word when put together.
I suggest a replacement word that is quite practical, not just for couples, but pretty much for all social relations. It’s a lovely word that appeared to me in a dream one night. A word that can have actual real-world consequences if widely practiced. That word is adjustmates. Yeah, I made it up. It defines those who are willing to adjust their behavior, thinking, or actions, when dealing with their mates, be they lovers, friends or family members.
When people have the capacity to adjust to each other, for each other, making themselves adjustmates, much of human conflict will melt away. There would be more love in the world, and dare I say, more lovely souls mating if more people become adjustmates. Souls would be happier. Mates would be happier. Even among friends, good friends that understand each other, when adjustments are made without feeling like one has sacrificed more than the others, a greater joy happens.
Alas, there are very few adjustmates in the world. If you look at relationships that have lingered for a long time, usually the participants have come to an understanding of the other. They have adjusted for each other. Instead of constantly cribbing about things you can’t change about someone, if both make an adjustment on any point of conflict, contention or behavior, become adjustmates if you will, peace can prevail. Contented relationships can bloom. The company of each other becomes more desirable.
This only works on two-way streets. When both parties, or all parties of a social combo, are amenable to adjusting. If only one half of the participants are constantly adjusting while the others are not, this practical word cannot work. Everybody has to kind of step back and get into that mode where you soften self-want and become others-aware, for the sake of the couple, group, community, society.
Adjustmates also must develop the capacity to do away with expectations and embrace interactions.
Your actions and words affect you first, but they also affect several people around you. The simplest, yet toughest act people can do is adjust. And I mean minor adjustments. No one needs to separate from their natural personalities and selves. This is not about surrendering. We don’t need matching mates. We don’t need superficial soulmates. What the world needs are more adjustmates.
Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine
Contact: [email protected]
X: @ShuklaWrites
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