On the tweet stream of @shortsayings the other day I saw the above quote by Robert Brault, and immediately it got my brain churning because I'm very much a believer in symbols and their meaning. As you can imagine, stories like Da Vinci Code get me all excited.
It's an excellent question, something I've never really thought of before. If love is represented with the shape of a heart, what then would be the shape that represents the soul?
Out of curiousity, the Robert Langdon in me went to Google image search to see what shapes people are using on the interwebs to represent love and the soul.
First, I did a Google image search for, "shape of love", and indeed the shape of a heart was the dominating image.
I then did a Google image search of "shape of soul" and a whole range of different shapes and images came up. There wasn't one thing that was consistent. I was a bit surprised that some of the first images included a car - the Kia Soul, Harrison Ford, and swords in a video game. I don't even want to begin thinking about what all that says about us as a culture...just saying.
Moving along...
So what is the shape of the soul? I guess there isn't a universal one because the soul isn't really a physical thing it's an essence, an embodiment, a just "is." We feel love in our heart - a physical body part. But, where do we feel soul in our body? We know it exists. How do we represent the soul in imagery?
Maybe it's a good thing that there isn't a universal symbol for the soul. However, a part of me kinda wants an official shape. When I'm scrapbooking what cutout am I supposed to use? At the end of my letters what do I scribble along with the xoxo? On my keyboard, I can use <3 for love, but what do I type for the soul?
I can hear the wise sages chiming in by saying the image of the soul is whatever we want it to be. Can you hear them too? Makes sense because we are all unique. Each of us has our own "is."
photo on Flickr by kaunokainen
Going along that sage logic, what symbol would you use to represent soul?
For me, I would use a white butterfly. The color white means openness and light to me, and the butterfly means flying to heights, beauty, transformation, tenacity, nature, and loveliness.
