Souls and Bodies

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body” 

C.S. Lewis

When live sucks my self-esteem down the drain, I sometimes have a little talk with myself. (Don’t judge me, it works). One thing I may tell myself during one of these talks is

“I am not _____ “,

and I fill in the blank. Such as, when an unexpected expense comes along and drains my bank account after months of scrimping and saving and finally getting to a point where I was beginning to see a glimmer of light at the end of the dark tunnel, I may tell myself – 

“I am not my bank account”. 

Sounds silly, right? Of course I’m not my bank account. We are separate from each other. We sometimes define ourselves by things like bank accounts however. 

Do you like to “people watch”? I do. One day when you are in a crowded place, look around at the bodies moving all around you and think of them as what they are - containers. The body

of that sweet little girl isn’t who she is. She is the innocent joy that fills the soul within her. She may also be the hurt that comes from losing a parent at a tender age.

That boy’s teenage, clumsy, pimply-faced body is not who he is. He is the persistence within that deals with the constant conflict between his desire to fit in and his desire to do what he knows is right. That woman is not her 80-year-old body. She is the spirit within that body that was shaped by living through wars, losing friends and relatives over the years, witnessing things you never imagine when you look at an 80 year old body. The souls that are these people are contained by the bodies you see.

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body”.