Opinion: A Hong Kong of Soulmates
Valentine's Day: blame Plato
Valentine’s day takes meticulous planning. I’m already predicting I’ll spend lunchtime avoiding Instagram, draft a sardonic tweet about Thorntons then delete it in case I upset their social media person, before finishing the day sitting in a shallow bath repeating mental affirmations that receipt of a torso-sized Moonpig ≠ fulfilment.
Single people direct lots of their Valentine’s vitriol at businesses. It’s just quite satisfying to have a go at something other than yourself for feeling more single than a stale Pringle left in the tube. But there’s someone who’s been getting off lightly in all of this (shout-out to Plato), and I think drawing attention to it might even be more empowering than that time Beyoncé wrote a song about single people putting their hands up.
In The Symposium, Plato wrote that earth was originally inhabited by a species of four-legged, four-armed and bi-facial humans, with happy souls wanting for nothing. Then we all got a bit big for our mortal boots, so Zeus split us in half, binding everyone to the quest to find our lost soul mates. I’m not one to hate on Plato, but I think it’s time we addressed our loyalty to this mythical narrative – even if only because imagining a race of self-satisfied, two-faced octo-humans is, frankly, petrifying.
Most of us have acknowledged the fact that it’s questionable that all these wandering demi-souls are bumping into their corresponding mates next to the same library vending machines/on Tinder/in a heated kickboxing taster session. When it comes to others we’re aware it’s more likely that The One is just the person they like more than anyone else they’ve met yet. But that doesn’t stop us secretly subscribing to the soul mate story when we fall in love. Those giddy chemicals get to work suspending your rationality, leaving you to consider your luck that, of all the bikinis on all the booze-cruises in Croatia, your very own Mr Right happened to vomit on yours.
But what is a soul mate? Surely it’s just a human with whom we’re tremendously compatible – similar enough to remind us why we’re awesome but different enough to distract us from any possible self-hatred we’re harbouring. They’re hopefully the gender we want to have sex with, and have a knack for reducing our hearts to spaghetti hoops.
If that’s the case, I think it’s naïve to assume that of the seven billion(ish) souls on earth, hanging out with only one of them could ever be this gratifying. So I’m going to propose a new framework. Imagine lining up the world’s population, from the person with whom you have least in common (say, an 18 year old UKIP member wearing a Hawaiian shirt who wants to settle down in Skegness), all the way to your ideal human (perhaps someone with the vocabulary of Russell Brand, the shoulders of Hercules, doesn’t bleat on proudly about being a Man-Feminist and nonchalantly rides a motorbike). Imagine scanning that entire line-up and discounting all but one as unsuitable runners-up. Seems pretty wasteful if you ask me.
Say you think you’d only be relationship-level compatible with about 5% of that line-up…that’s still 35 million contenders. Even the pickiest of romantics who might only consider 0.1% of that line-up are still looking at a pool of seven million people they’d probably have an awesome time, beautiful babies and a banging golden anniversary with, if that’s what they’re into. Seven million people. The population of Hong Kong.
It’s not the stuff of Mills & Boon, but who even reads Mills & Boon now anyway? There’s a Hong Kong-ful of people waiting to find out how implausibly immense you are and share their pizza with you. But one thing’s certain, it’s unlikely you’re going to meet many of them until you’ve pulled the plug on not only the shallow bath you’re sitting in, but also the idea there’s someone out there whose job is to complete you.