Are you a unique, uncommonly wise, or solitary being?
Do you gravitate towards esoteric, existential questions, and delve into philosophy, the sciences, and religion in search of answers?
If so, there’s a good chance you may be a very, very old soul.
An old soul is someone who has a been there, done that attitude to life, presumably because they have been there, (meaning here) and have done that (meaning lived) many times before.
I’ve often been identified as one myself, so I know the signs when I see them, and can easily pick one out of a crowd. And today I’m going to show you how to spot the signs both in yourself, and in those around you that you might also be a unique old soul.
But first a disclaimer.
Since I’m writing this article, does this mean I believe in reincarnation?
Well, maybe.
I think there’s far too much about human consciousness we don’t understand to jump to any brash conclusions, but reincarnation does seem to explain many questions we have about human life and potential.
If this is indeed the case, then those who have reincarnated the most on this earth, would be called the old souls.
So how can you tell if you’re one of them?
Chances are, if you’re reading an article like this, you very well might be. That’s because old souls are remarkably curious, hungry for knowledge. Which leads us to the first sign.
You have a deep, burning desire to know the truth.
You read. Everything.
Well, not quite.
More aptly, you’ll read or listen to anything you can get your hands on when it comes to philosophy, science and religion. You scour these fields with the veracity of a hungry wolf because there’s something you’re looking for. Something that seems deeply missing from humanity, something you’re desperately trying to reclaim.
Call it what you will, divinity, spirit, truth, you’ve gravitated towards areas like science and religion to answer a question that’s been calling from within you for as long as you can remember.
Who am I, and why do I exist?
Is there more to life than just what I know?
Why is there a universe anyway? How can there be something, rather than nothing?
All variations of the same question you have about the fundamental reality of life.
You view your life as a quest to answer just that, however successful or unsuccessful it may have been, and find it fascinating that people can go their whole lives without ever asking themselves the same things!
This is the first surefire sign that you’re an old soul.
It suggests that you’ve grown rather world-weary, from living multiple lifetimes, and are no longer interested in the ways of the masses. You want to know if there’s anything more to your existence than just what’s happening at this particular time on this particular planet.
You aren’t usually interested in who’s president, or which celebrities will be where, what sports team won the championship, and the like. Whatever new cars came out this year are all well and good, but it all just seems secondary to the ultimate questions you seek to answer.
Because you don’t buy into the whole, status and celebrity obsessed, hyper materialistic game of society, you aren’t exactly a huge hit with the crowd…
Which brings me to my next point.
You frequent solitude:
Because the games most people play don’t interest you, you aren’t really good at small talk, or idle, contemporary chatter about this that and the weather.
You want to have deep conversation, you want to engage people with the same questions you’ve been wrestling with, to see if they’ve got a new or interesting perspective! Unfortunately, most people could care less about the greatest mysteries of life, so long as their team gets into the playoffs, or their outfit looks nice. This disconnect between most peoples’ surface level interests and your deeper ones leads you to spend much of your time alone.
BE CAREFUL. If you aren’t mindful enough, you may grow to resent people and society for being ‘ignorant’ or ‘out of touch’ with what really matters. That kind of attitude is just thinly veiled arrogance, and will cause more pain than good.
Another consequence of this isolation is that you’ll grow to deeply enjoy your own company, and not require that most others like or understand you. You’ll find bliss in the quiescence of solitude, and not look for external validation of your search for the truth.
You’ll also begin to discover some very interesting things about yourself in your time alone…
You have many hobbies, talents, and gifts:
Because you’ve (probably) lived multiple lifetimes, you seem to be capable at almost everything you do. Cooking, writing, music, sports, anything, you name it, it feels like you have at least some experience with these skills, even though you’ve never tried them before. At least in so far as you know. It’s possible you’ve accumulated these skills over multiple lifetimes and are only beginning to tap into the wealth of knowledge and experience you’ve gained during those lives.
Another variation of this is when an old soul doesn’t have a whole list skills and talents but is incredibly gifted in one or two areas.
This would explain the problem of genius; situations where people, often at extremely young ages manifest extraordinary talents far beyond their years.
After all it was Mozart, who at the age of five, sat down at the piano, and wrote one of the most iconic melodies in human history “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.
These skills could be extremely useful in a status driven materialistic world, but you aren’t really interested in benefitting from them them like that. You could probably care less about using your abilities to turn a profit. For this reason, the type A personalities will see you, with with an array of talents and no real drive to use them (at least not monetarily) and label you and underachiever.
It can be painful being misunderstood, but little do they know, all these skills and gifts bring you no closer to having what you really want. Truth.
You may also feel mismatched with the time you were born in:
I know, this one is such a cliché, but if reincarnation has any validity to it, then this would actually make sense. You may feel a deep sense of attachment and nostalgia for the music, culture or architecture of another society, in a time or place you’ve never been to.
Why is that? Why should you feel emotionally connected to another time period, particularly one that passed long before you were ever born?
If you truly are an old soul, then these pieces come together very nicely. For instance, I’ve never been to Italy. But everything about their culture from their food, architecture, and music feels, for lack of a better word, like home to me.
Now. being a pragmatist, I like to just simply dismiss that feeling, but what if there is something to it? What if something deeper is happening beneath the surface of just a simple ‘preference’ for Italian food? Who can really say?
Another huge indicator of your Old Soul’ness is that you’re remarkably wise, particularly for someone who may still be very young:
You always seem to be on the frontier of human thought, realizing insights that might take the rest of the world years or decades to catch onto. This is not unlike say a Van Gogh, whose art was centuries ahead of his time.
You may feel rather tired, and world-weary and notice the beginnings of massive changes in society far earlier than others could even glimpse them, and furthermore, aren’t really interested in them because it feels like you’ve seen this movie before.
You may read Shakespeare or Tolstoy and find truths that you already intuitively knew expressly written in their words, however, to others they might seem like a revelation, or simply not make sense at all.
You’re also remarkably emotionally stable and reliable. I think that wisdom and stability grow in tandem, because events that seem to be of massive or apocalyptic proportions don’t seem to stress or frighten you in the least.
You’re wise enough to know certain problems don’t mean the end of the world, and wise enough to always look at the larger picture.
Because of your wisdom and emotionally stability, people often turn to you for advice, especially in intimate relationships. In relationships you find yourself teaching, as well as loving the other person, and helping them unfold and develop as a human being in ways they almost certainly could not have otherwise. This is NOT normal. Most relationships don’t work like this at all.
Most relationships, especially in their earlier phases, alternate between intense sex and intense combat, with brief, amiable resting periods in between. If the relationship is relatively stable, and not catastrophically toxic, it can be sustained across time, and the intensity of sex and of combat gradually fade.
However, in relationships you aren’t really interested in fighting or the intensity of drama, (though you’ll enjoy it in the sex) and while some may find this attitude boring, the wiser partners will quickly recognize the value of your remarkable stability.
Even if a relationship ends your partner may say they’ve grown tremendously from having been with you, and are profusely grateful for your role in their life. Again. Not typical at all.
But there you have it. I’ve just given you five surefire signs to know whether or not you are indeed an old soul.
These are not hard and fast rules, and should not be taken as such, to a degree, most everyone manifests all of these qualities to a greater or lesser extent. However, if in your honest assessment, these signs fit the profile of you to a T, there may be something far more interesting going on.
Now, there is much, much more that remains to be said about old souls, including the dark side of being an old soul, but I think it best to put these in a different article, and save them for a different time.
With that said, I hope you enjoyed, if you did hit the links to follow up Unchartedself on social media, and if you’re on Steemit, give this post a like! Until next time!