TableTopics: #19

Question #19: Is there only one soul mate for each person?

No.

This one's a little awkward to answer since I'm all married and stuff, but in my head it really all comes down to the math of the thing.

I'm one of seven billion or so people on the planet. I'm a fan of girls, so that narrows things down to 3.5 billion for my soul mate.

Let's look at some numbers to see how many of those 3.5 billion I'll ever meet:

• My high school graduating class had about 400 students - 200 or so girls.
• Let's include the girls three or so grades each way of mine. That's 1200 more girls.
• I went to college with no girls. None at all. Shut up. It was a great school.
• By the time my career is over, I figure I will have taught with a couple hundred female teachers.
• I teach somewhere in the range of fifty young women every year. If I teach for thirty-five years, that's 1750 female students.
• I figure I will have bumped into another couple thousand or so women and girls along my life. Let's say 2000 to be safe.

That puts us at 5500 women I will have dealt with in my life. Let's double that number to assume I'm being gregarious. Heck, let's triple it and round up some to hope I maybe meet 20,000 women in my life - many of whom are pretty far out of any age range where I would be possibly even consider spending my life with them.

20,000 / 3.5 billion is 0.00000571 that means at an absolute outside best, I might meet 0.000571% of the female population of the planet. That's a 0.000571% chance I'll meet my soul mate if she exists, and we can assuredly eliminate a huge portion of the 20,000 because I'm not attracted to them...not age appropriate for them...in a crappy mood when I happen to bump into them...too busy failing them...creeped out by the fact that they're like as old as my Grandma...

That means if there is a soul mate out there for everyone, I have to assume that I'm never gonna meet mine, and dang near everybody else is never gonna meet theirs. So if I am to believe that there's a soul mate out there for everybody, then I also have to assume that we're pretty much guaranteed never to find that soul mate. For me that's was more depressing than assuming that we just don't have a soul mate.

That being said, I don't view this as an actually depressing thing. For me, it means that I don't have to hunt for that perfect one. I just have to look for someone who makes me really happy, who I find attractive, and who is a pretty outstanding rommate. I'm all good with that.

In case you're late to the party, here's the deal...

Here's what I've answered so far...

• #25 - "I Know What Love Is" by Don White
• #35 - no business 
• #36 - MLK, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech on the National Mall 
• #16 - What life experience has strengthened you the most?

Already requested answers...they'll be answered (probably in this order)...

• 22...24...27...32...37
  

Feel free to request other answers in the comments.