When I was a child I was told, like many of us, the biblical story of Adam and Eve that basically explained how God created Eve from the subtracted rib of Adam. Furthermore I was also instructed about the concept of Heaven, that was depicted as a sky high place where everything is beautiful and everybody is happy. The purpose of our lives, as believers, is to make the right actions to be worthy to access Heaven in the afterlife, they explained.
Back then I resolved—with my childhood imagination—the puzzle to reach heaven. My reasoning told me that since heaven was a place high in the sky and the residents of heaven were mostly angels, I needed a pair of wings to fly over. But how I was supposed to get a pair of those feathered extensions and attach them to my back?
Then I remembered, that biblical heaven and biblical paradise are used interchangeably, in other words, both are the same place. So, if our ancestors, Adam and Eve, were once casted out of paradise, they should have had wings. But since Adam’s rib was subtracted to conform Eve, each one, had just a wing instead a pair of wings, reason why neither of them—or us, as their progeny—can fly. Maybe the wing is still there attached to our rib, but is invisible to naked eye, I thought.
That thinking line conduced me to the next mystery… how are supposed single-winged humans to fly to heaven?
Then I answered myself: what if, two humans hold hands and synchronize their wings to fly as one? That made sense to me, that was a reason to explain the unity of a couple and purpose of marriage. But there was a problem, it could not be any person. It could not be an eager soul that left you behind nor a lazy soul that hold you back. It could not be a heavy soul that draw you down nor a light soul that force to hold of the feet. It should be a complementing soul, a twin soul, because you will travel shoulder to shoulder, and you are expected to do the same you ask for.
After arriving to that conclusion I decided to embark myself in the search for the one.
Now I look back then and realize that maybe I was just expanding the mythology, making it my own. But, I also came to the conclusion that as humans, sometimes we need to believe in something.
Not because it’s true, but because we are poets and poetry is about beauty.
What is life if not beautiful?
M. Ch. Landa