Old Soul

It was a few weeks ago that a friend of mine turned to me and said "Rollie, you're an old soul."  Realizing that he was probably right but still in denial myself, I asked some of my closer friends this question, and the answer they gave was also "Yes".  Now that I feel older than I really am (21), I start to realize some things, and I'd like to point those out while also doing some internet research on this ideal, because even little things like this are things I feel should be fact based, and not just solely on my opinions. 

The first thing I wanted to find out was what it actually meant to be an old soul, so I turned to the internet, which I know you can't believe everything you read on there, but I feel this article from the website Psychic Today at least gets us a basic description of what it means to be an old soul.  

Per the article, "Most old souls feel a certain disconnect from the Earth, and most are inherently aware that they are different."

Um, excuse me?  Do all "old souls" theoretically feel that way?  I'd like to believe that definition is false.  I have never felt a "certain disconnect" from Earth in the slightest.  I feel rather connected to it I think.  Sure, my political views skew somewhere down the middle nowadays, and I always strive to "Love thy neighbor", but neither one of those things makes me disconnected from the Earth.  I'm a human being for Pete's sake, not some weird alien space creature from another planet.  This quote in the article makes me boil just a little bit.  We shouldn't be having these articles out there in the online world for everyone to read and look at and then feel bad.  That's not ok psychics, not ok!

Elsewhere in the same article, we also read that "Old souls are often uninterested in what other people in their age group find exciting, and as a result they aren't satisfied making friends with people whom they can't relate to, and they tend to find themselves on their own a lot of the time."  Ok, now this one I can relate to a little bit more, although I already have friends in my age group, and even would really enjoy having a few more friends my age that are in this area, and I say a few more because I do have friends in the 18-24 age bracket, but most of them are about two to eight hours away in any direction.  But think of what a vast majority of people my age are interested in (and no I'm not saying any of these are bad things to enjoy).  There's things such as drinking every day, following a fitness program that's way too rigid, smoking pot, and multiple other activities that I don't really enjoy that I feel sets me apart from others my age.  I've found as time goes on, that I tend to be able to more closely associate with people in the 25-30 age bracket, and I have friends in other age brackets too.  Do I think that's a problem?  No! Of course not!  I feel privileged to have friends and acquaintances that are already well into life and will happily pass their knowledge and/or skills down to me, yet are always happy to sit and have a good laugh also.  Man I love laughing :) 

The solitary thing is true as well.  Often times when I'm not in the classroom or at work, I find myself traveling along all by myself like a lonely cowboy on a horse that doesn't even neigh.  There's two and a half hour car rides to Bemidji or five hour drives home with no one in the passenger seat to talk to, there's days off where I take myself on dates to Panda Express, the movie theater, and the laundromat, and there's even days where I just hide in my room for hours on end gaming or talking to friends.  It seems weird that I'm saying that I'm as lonely as the picture I'm painting here, but it's 100% the truth.  Sometimes I don't mind "being so alone" as the Hobo Johnson song "Peach Scone" says multiple times in the chorus, but other times I really do mind that and wish I had some company.  Depression and anxiety make for an absolute whopper of a combo too when you're by yourself and find it hard to distract.

At this point in time, the article starts advertising for me to "speak with a telephone psychic for as low as a dollar a minute" and I pull out, because that's just ridiculous.  

So now I feel about a good ten to fifteen years older than I actually am and I don't like that all, but maybe it's a good thing in some ways....?

For instance, I find that people that mature quicker than others, of which I was kind of one of them (I say kind of because I didn't fully mature right away), are some of the best people around.  The people who know how to apologize when they're wrong, hold steady to their commitments, and apply themselves to everything in life they do while still finding time to be nice and polite to everyone around them are fantastic folks that I feel deserve recognition.  Great job people! 

And maybe it means that I just found my interests quicker than others or something and developed faster?  I don't really know.  But I do feel like I ended up putting the cart before the horse with a lot of my career-specific training and now I'm sitting through college feeling like I'm wasting my time and my money, but that's not a huge issue to me either.  I love the fact that I was able to get into radio so quick and that I have about three and a half years worth of broadcasts lying around my computers and my Google Drive.

Sometimes I look at my other interests and feel that I'm in the sunset of my life.  I know how to play the drums half decently, and I expanded that to include the auxiliary percussion instruments a few years back.  I blog at least once a week and even though there's been periods of time where I've stopped for a little while, everyone's always ready to come back and read it some more.  And I even manage to get on out and support the community in some way shape or form every once in a while.  Part of me feels like I have at least a little something to be proud of, but then I stop to remember one of my values, the value that pride is bad, and I remember I must try to remain humble.

On the flip side though, it feels like life is just beginning.  Maybe these first few years out of high school are the time where your younger self sunsets, and the new "old soul" sunrises.  I don't really know, and I don't want to sound uneducated, but I feel that could be right.  Maybe someday I'll get up in the morning and not feel so tired and like I just have to go through the motions, rather I'll spring up out of bed like a crazed chicken and run to my first adventure of the day.  But that remains to be seen.

So, maybe I am an old soul.  Maybe I'll never manage to connect with too many people in college and I should just accept that fact and get on with my life enjoying my time with the older people in my life at this time, and when I reach their age that's when the fun begins?  The possibilities are truly endless and you never know what waits around the corner of each and every new day, but for now concerning me, I just don't know what the next day will bring.  Only God knows that.  So, I'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings, won't I?

Have you ever been called an "old soul"?  Have you embraced it?  Or maybe you were offended...?  Let's chat over email or the comment section of this blog.  I appreciate the chatter always.