Old Souls or Hocus Pocus?

Disclaimer: This post is a little deep, so don't say I didn't warn you...

While having a conversation with my boss last week, she turned to me and said "has anyone ever told you that you're an old soul?"

Considering the previous topics of conversation had been bland, work related discussions, this question had come straight out of left field. It was, however, a much more appealing subject so I happily replied with a modest "yes, people have been saying that to me my whole life".

After a brief discussion, I left the meeting and returned to my desk, where I reflected on what had just occurred. My boss- a strong, savvy and intelligent woman 25-30 years my senior, had just given me one of the most flattering compliments I could have asked for.

To be considered an 'old soul' may seem a little weird to some, but to me it was an accurate representation of how I feel about myself, who I am as a person and more importantly, how I am perceived by others.

If I'm being honest, I can't remember a time in my life when my mind felt on par with my numerical age. It was never a matter of academic intelligence, but rather maturity. At 14 I felt as though I was 16. At 16 I was 19 and now, at 24 I feel like my mind is in a place far beyond my years.

I have never been into the typical things that girls my age were squealing about or crying about or thinking about. I'm not a big drinker, so that element alone vastly impacted my adolescence and I have never felt the pressure to conform to trending social behaviours or attitudes.

When I got home later that day, I asked my mum if during my early years, I always been that way? I suppose I wanted to know if it was quintessentially me, or whether I had taught myself to think a certain way throughout the years? My mum, without a moments hesitation, replied with a definite "yes". She went on to say that even as a baby, people had told her that I looked wise, like I'd lived before.

All this talk of age and souls reminded me of one of my favourite scenes from the film Before Sunrise. These were Jessie's (Ethan Hawke) thoughts on the theory of past lives and eternal souls...

"... 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, individual, unique soul, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, just walking... I mean, is that why we're so scattered?"

I find this a very interesting concept and although it's one that I'm sure would be torn apart by religious believers, I do think there's some truth to the theory. Maybe dejavu exists because we see something in our present that reminds us of our past, yet why can't we seem to put our finger on when it happened? Sometimes our gut instincts tell us to make decisions that don't quite add up, but we find it impossible to ignore the overwhelming sense of it being either right or wrong. There are those times throughout our lives when we pick up a skill or learn something new and people comment by saying "you're such a natural". Is it our born ability to do specific things well, or maybe a tiny fraction of someone else's skill and soul?  And while we may be scattered if you compare it to the rising statistics in mental illnesses, we are also a race getting more intelligent as the generations progress.

What if all these feelings and emotions stem from a far deeper place? What if they are merely a reflection of the lives we once lived?