A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful.
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
People have amazing ideas about how the life and relationships works . I fully agree with Alan de Botton that romanticism, books, and movies created over the past century or so created crazy ideas about just this – relationships between people.
One of them which I find particularly fickle is the concept of the soulmate. A wonderful imaginary creature, who you are supposed to meet one day, who is supposed to make you whole (whatever that nowadays almost empty metaphor means), who should suddenly give your life meaning, who shows you what you haven’t seen before, and who just somehow miraculously makes your life better.
Well, so do some drugs as well.
People are silly beings – we are driving our perception by lucid images, romantic ideas, shaky values, and misconceptions engraved in our brains from our childhood, by our culture, and by whatever shit we have gone through. People have flaws. People are beautifully imperfect and naive. Yet they think that there is something “perfect” that they are missing, and when they find it, everything will be “finally ok”. They think that life is about making the one right choice. Meeting the one right person. Doing the one right thing.
Well, I think that people often forget the plural. Life is not about “the choice”, but about a long series of choices, meetings, things, decisions. Every day is a struggle and a perfect relationship, a perfect life is just that – a series of happenings that one plays with, until one day, they end – in the moment of our death.
In any case, what I think as a more correct perception of life is that soulmates in the sense of the right fit don’t exist. I think that we should use this word as a description of an amazing encounter that shows us a little bit more for a limited period of time, enriches us, and then goes away. I think that it is exactly this limited exposure that leaves a much bigger impact on our lives as it keeps us wondering and tackling the amazing question of “wtf?” and enables us to dive deeper into the details of the encounter.
I was lucky enough to be on a train where one can experience these wonderful, limited encounters almost on a daily basis.
After watching the trees for few hours, I started to feel thirsty and walked my daily path through 4 train cars at which end was waiting my beloved food vagon with one favourite collection of Russian pop and one bored waiter.
To be honest, there are not many options how to receive your daily dose of movement in the train. You have the “let’s-climb-up-to-my-bed” activity if you opted for a upper bed, then the evening and morning “let’s-change-our-clothes-without-my-cohabitants-noticing” yoga and “let’s-not-fall-in-the-toilet” pilates session. The only thing where you can enjoy some spatial movement is the “tour-de-vagons” trip.
The whole train is maybe 15 cars long and it’s a good idea to remember where your compartment is located. As I decided to take the ride off-season, the whole train is rather empty and some cars have only 1 or 2 inhabitants. The restaurant car is located in the front, I’m located somewhere in the middle. It’s fun to walk through the cars, as the temperature contrast between the heated corridors and the unheated connecting passages between 2 cars is tremendous. Yes, sometimes you feel even snow falling on your head which strangely puts you into this trance-like stance with an illusion of a connection between the Siberia and yourself.
Which is of course not happening, because in 99% of cases you are merely a lousy tourist travelling through the region without any knowledge or way of relating yourself to it in any possible way.
Anyway, my goal was not to indulge myself into a personal lie. My goal was to get some beer and jot down my ideas which were running wild.
I entered the place, greeted the waiter, and ordered a can of beer. I looked outside of the frozen window, took a sip of the light Baltika, and opened my diary when then suddenly, the door of the car were open by a Norway couple.
The faces were unknown – I have seen them few time before on the train, we even exchanged a shy “hi” once, but there was no single point that would tip that “hi” over to an actual conversation. I was somehow expecting the conversation to happen, I knew that it would eventually come, as there were only so many foreigners on the train, and somehow, if you are outside of your typical bubble, you tend to stick and relate yourself to people who are similarly “uprooted”. In any case, the actual conversation didn’t happen yet.
That was, of course, about to change.
Smiling Bjorn and Ella were absolutely lovely. He was working as a journalist, she was working in the Red cross. We spent few hours discussing the political situation in Europe, brainstorming jokes about Swedish people (which I later were glad to exchange with my Swedish friends), refugees, life, and alcohol.
The time passed quickly. My brain was surprised by the brisk pace of the jokes and similar cultural background which allowed for fast conversation and rapid switching of topics. After 4 days of limited social engagement everything felt fresh and new (not only because many of the Swedish jokes were really good).
We managed to dry out the beer reserves and I slowly started to feel tipsy, when I suddenly realised that I almost forgot a very important thing.
No, this was not the story of a typical drunk-rage where you suddenly have to do something because if you don’t, then the world is for some reasons screwed. I felt that the train was slowly slowing down and I remembered that today evening one of my lovely girls is getting of the train.
I looked at my wrist watch (with the Moscow time) and summarised the situation with one word:
“Fuck.”
I quickly got up, said thanks and bye to my friends from Norway and ran back to my coupe. The train just stopped and I knew that I had only few minutes of time. I arrived at my door and dramatically opened the compartment.
It was empty.
I ran to the neighbouring car and jumped out of the car in my T-shirt, just in time to see Tatiana giving a big hug to Luboslava on the platform. I quickly approached them and blurted out some Chinese toward Tatiana. She understood and translated it to Russian:
“It was truly nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
What followed was like a scene from a typical Russian movie (or at least my personal image of a typical Russian movie). Tatiana shed a tear, Luboslava hugged me and gave me a set of 3 huge kisses on my cheeks. She adressed me a stream of Russian which I couldn’t (of course) catch, and then we parted ways.
She hurried away and I returned back to my compartment. Without Luboslava, the air felt strangely chilly.
Tatiana mentioned that she misses Luboslava already, that she was like a second mother to her.
I nodded, in silence.
The train started to move, and I could see the reflections of the train lights on the birches covered in snow.
Tatiana asked me: “What are you thinking about?”
“About tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because tomorrow, the train stops in Irkutsk.”
“And what is in Irkutsk, Michael?”
I smiled: “In Irkutsk, Tatiana, I get off.”