Put Your Soul in Cold Storage
I recently watched a movie called Cold Souls which starred Paul Giamatti released the later part of 2009.
The movie was a comedy, but it got me thinking about souls in general, and of course, my own soul. Would I want to put my own soul in cold storage and take a break from it for a while?
It was advertized as a soul searching comedy, and indeed it truly was.
Paul was an actor who felt that his own soul was getting in the way of his acting. His anxiety paralyzed his acting, and one day as he was browsing the magazine New Yorker , he finds an article about a company who alleviates suffering by extracting souls. After some searching and a little more consideration, he has his soul extracted only to find it is only the size of a chickpea and looks just like one too.
Giamatti intends to reinstate his soul once his dramatic performance is finished. However, in the meantime, his soul is "borrowed" and taken to Russia for someone who has the looks of an actress, but lacks any dramatic skills. Souls are extracted and traded as commodities by this company.
Giamatti never bothered to tell his wife what he has done, but she definitely notices that something is different about him. Finally, he confesses that he had his soul extracted. She asks him why he would do such a thing, and he says he does not know, but he still retains 5% of it.
Since Giamatti cannot get his own soul back, temporarily he decides that having some other person's soul is better than having no soul at all. He looks at a catalog and chooses the soul of a poet, which helps him greatly with his dramatic performance. But, he really wants to get his own soul back.
Well, I could tell you the rest of the story, but it is better that you see it for yourself. What it did is get me thinking seriously about our souls.
Would we really want to trade our soul for that of another, even if it was just temporary? Is the soul a separate part from our physical bodies? Has it always existed? Will it continue to exist after we die?
In the movie, Cold Souls, Giamatti was given the opportunity to look into his soul by wearing a particular pair of glasses. The thought of it made him nervous, so he chose not to. Because of that, when his soul was lost for some time, he became out of touch with it, so when he finally got it back, it took really looking into it for his body to accept it.
Would I be frightened to look inside my own soul? What would I find there? Is the soul what makes us who we are? Is that why people believe in soulmates? Is there such a thing as soulmates?
I am a follower of American Idol and have been since the beginning. I think what many of the singers lack is what some of us consider soul. They may have a terrific voice they are missing an essential part of the package - soul.
Webster's Dictionary defines soul as:
- the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life
the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe - an active or essential moving part - the moral and emotional nature of human beings
- the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment
- spiritual or moral force such as fervor
- Black American singers convey intense emotional fervor through music and call it Soul Music or Soul Food.
In Genesis 2:7 in the Bible it tells us that:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
In Deuteronomy 6:7 we are commanded to:
...love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Psalms 16 is a song written by David who rejoices:
10: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
Psalms 22:29 also fortells the Messiah's reign:
All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.
Then there is the most famous of David's Psalms 23 which exclaims:
He restoreth my soul.
And, I could go on and on, as there are many more scriptures that refer to the soul. Here are a list of scriptures which refer to the soul. http://scriptures.lds.org/en/tg/s/233
Well, I have not made a total commitment as to what the soul is or isn't, but know that our soul is worth taking care of and watching out for as indicated in this movie, Cold Souls. Hope you get a chance to watch it.
