Last night I had the oddest thought: When person A feels a sense of longing for person B, perhaps deep down it is not actually person B who is being longed for.<\/p>\n
Rather, somewhere inside the mind of person A, they have labeled a part of themselves “residing within person B”. In some important emotional sense, person A has placed a portion of their sense of self into the identity of another soul, to be worn like a phantom limb. A common way among lovers of describing this feeling is “I am yours”.<\/p>\n
If person B reciprocates this operation, the resonance can create a tremendous mutual sense of euphoria. Each lover perceives a part of their essential self within the person of the other, which creates a feeling of heightened existence for both.<\/p>\n
Alas, either A or B might one day drift away, for whatever reason. This leaves the other person feeling that a part of their own self has been severed. The resultant loss can bring about a sense of mourning, as though there has been a death.<\/p>\n
Yet within mere months following such a loss, these phantom limbs of the soul will, of their own accord, fade away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night I had the oddest thought: When person A feels a sense of longing for person B, perhaps deep down it is not actually person B who is being longed for. Rather, somewhere inside the mind of person A, they have labeled a part of themselves “residing within person B”. In some important emotional … Continue reading “Phantom limbs of the soul”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11574"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11578,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11574\/revisions\/11578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}