By: Kevin Thomas ~Copy Editor~

Human beings are incredibly complex creatures. The brain is divided into more parts than I care to know, and each part does something different for how we, as human beings, act, react and do just about everything. But I believe that we are something more than just our brain chemistry. I believe we are more than just a compilation of all of our memories, more than just the people that surround us, more than just the things that we have seen and felt.

I have wondered for far too long if all that I am is just a product of my environment and brain chemistry.

It’s much more serious than simply believing there to be something more than just these things that make up who I am. I need there to be something more.

So far, the only evidence that I’ve found to support my need for myself to be more than these things is from the dreams of each one of us and the little things that I’ve noticed people doing, for a reason that they don’t seem to know. It’s the little inexplicable things that mean the most. It’s because of the little impossibilities that every single one of us does, just because we do them, that I am making this plea for the existence of the soul.

The way that a person may wear their watch on the inside of their wrist, rather than the outside. How some people rub out their cigarettes on the ground before putting them in the ash tray. A person hiding their face because their mouth has widened into a smile because they’ve been complimented on something as simple as their shoes, which might just be the coolest thing that someone else might have seen that day. The fact that someone’s pair of shoes is the coolest thing that that person has seen during their entire day.

Maybe it’s not the way that a person acts, but the way that they speak. They may say “of course” instead of “no problem” or “you’re welcome.” They may say “anytime.” They might say that “time measures them 21 years old” instead of just saying that they’re 21.

The soul exists in the intricacies of our actions, but also in the complexities of the dreams that we all have. The things that we spend our whole life searching for, spending our money, on giving away our time to, in the faint hope of eternal happiness that might come from achieving it.

I’ve always been interested in learning why people want anything at all. Often times, people don’t even really know. I met a man who was a chef. He didn’t want to own his own restaurant—he was perfectly content with just cooking food for others. I asked him why he chose that profession, and he said it was because he’d always wanted to be one. When I asked him why he’d always wanted that, as opposed to wanting to run a business or be a painter or be a professional baseball player, he said that it was just what felt the most natural to him. It just felt right.

“But why?” I pressed on. What about it felt so right? Was it the creating? Was it knowing that he had made something? Was it because he wanted to be renowned for doing something well? Or was it because he was good at it, and he wanted nothing more than to be the best at something? He said that it was none of the above. It just did.

He also said that he was annoyed with the line of questioning, and so I dropped it.

Every single one of us has a dream. Some romantic idea of what we want, regardless of how ridiculous it may be. Regardless of how unrealistic it may seem, every single one of us has a dream. That dream, combined with all the little things that make us who we are, the things that exist outside of our body, are the things that I believe to make up the soul that we need to exist.