Listen to: Prayer by Eleni Karaindrou

I have always wondered to myself if this hunt ever comes to an end. Though, I never knew what exactly I have been searching for.
Lately, I have been pondering the thought of soul searching and what it really means; is it an endless search for that missing piece of the puzzle, or a changing variable to fill an ever so empty void?

As I try to answer this not so new raised question in the chambers of my thoughts, I find myself caught in a timeless capsule of open conquests with no prey in hand, and no trophy to place on a dusty shelf of accomplishments. I start to pace slowly in this capsule of mine and think of what went wrong – or did nothing ever go wrong but my perception of accomplishments and this soul searching hunt of mine is not well adjusted?

We are all hunters, huntresses in my case, and this life is in fact a virtual game; those games where one builds a character and hunts for little mushrooms and snails to kill in order to level up. The more we level up in this game, the more experience points we gain. Now, I know these games were based on reality – but what if, say, we twist the table and look at life through a virtual game, rather than looking at a virtual game through life?

I mean, everything belongs to this continuous circle. It never ends, it keeps going and whether we like it or not, we keep going as well. Then, if we look at life as though it was the ultimate game, and events as sequenced spins of the same circle, where does that leave us with our so-called soul searching? Does that make us settle for best fit of souls? Or are we in charge of this game, can we slow the pace of this circle? Can we logout whenever we please, or is that the fine line that separates virtual games from reality?

I seem to be proposing far too many questions for a short-lived post like this to answer, but to me, it is rather unanswerable. The idea of soul searching is one I never seem to grasp, because even when I am not searching for a soul, for whatever reason, I find myself discovering minuet alterations of this soul of mine that make all the difference. Does that mean that this soul searching is something implied on us, rather than us wanting it? Or it something we choose to be content with, something we do not mind living with, or something we have grown accustom to?

As I maintain this soul of mine; an introvert of thoughts exteriorized with an extrovert personality of actions, I find it to be troublesome at times, perhaps more often than I would admit. Perhaps, time is the only cure for us to mould into our own wax seat of heaven or hell. Perhaps, the conquest of soul searching is nothing but a fancy concept coined by therapists to bill us with a higher pay the next time we visit them – or when we actually do decide that seeing a therapist is the next key to the puzzle of the hunt of our lives.

Regardless of how much of a variable beings are, the only constant factor is that crave to fill an imaginary inner void that seems to cover light-years of distance. We have repulsed from our interiors so much so that we spend our time trying to make the world a prettier place; our malls become too fancy for flip flops and socks. Our mosques and churches become too architecturally valuable for us to pray in, so we stand in front of them, take pictures, and post them on social networks. Our houses have become too filled with pricey junk of vases, colorful paintings, and big flat screens with overwhelmingly unneeded resolution, just so we can see things clearer.

So we can watch our movies in HD. So we can get the most likes and retweets. So we can feel that we belong to a society that we can always turn to when the soul searching turns out empty. We are too lazy to accept that it is not the hunt that has gone wrong – it is our perception of reality and how idealistically skewed it really is.

How is it, though, that the more beautifully sculpted this world becomes, the uglier it is from within? Why is it too hard to look at a white blank avatar and feel so agitated? What is wrong with nothing but white? What?