Commentary On Human Nature: A Reimagining of Plato's Symposium

For my mother, my soul. 

When the universe was created, it was done so with the promise of an old man. While there was no one to hear it, his vow echoed out across where the stars would soon be. 

“I am here. You are not alone. You will be beautiful. You will be good.” He reassured the ears that could not yet listen. 

The craftsman thought of the cosmos as his finest apparatus. The suns and planets spun around each other in a choreographed dance, functioning as a timed mechanism, sustaining each other. One could not occur without the other. This is what it was to be. 

On his worlds, he worked on the science of his promises. His hands, aged and calloused, touched the Earth as gently as a father cradling the soft head of his newborn child. 

The craftsman sat at his bench, and with a sigh, there was Life. Slow at first, plants took root. Storms ripped open the skies and poured oceans into the ground. These things fell into a routine, all new, all together. This is what it was to be. 

His favorite part was just to watch as Life, against all odds, grew. Eventually, the plants were then joined on the ground by beings not alike the craftsman, but not so different from him. 

The craftsman gazed on happily, relishing in the success of his inventions. He imagined the feeling to be the same as a parent seeing their child take their first clumsy, unpracticed, steps, though this circumstance would come along much later. 

Things went on like this for a time, but the earth dwellers longed for something of their own, and to feel the same pride as the craftsman. To have a commonality with both the sculptor of the cosmos and the plants embedded in the dirt; to be able to create something new. This is what it was to be. 

These beings came together to create something not in their own image. Rather, in the image of what they felt would be wonderful. Perhaps it was the craftsman’s promise, resonating in them after all this time, that inspired them to do what they did. Maybe, it was their care for each other.

The new creatures sat before their makers. Felt the ground beneath them with four hands, and balanced themselves with four legs. For each pair of limbs, there were two faces, with four eyes. Their forms were many in number, and twice as many in souls.

These beings. These humans. They were unique in every sense of the word. Two hearts in one body. Shared blood, shared air, shared sensations. Their souls and minds were intertwined, and they felt nothing but devotion and care for each other, and in turn, for themselves. This, oh this is what it was to be. 

Time went on, as it often does. The craftsman’s beings reveled in their creations, and the creations reveled in themselves. The old man sat wearily at his bench, heart full from the knowledge that all that he had made was well, and that they cared for each other in the way he cared for them.  

He knew, as any inventor did, albeit reluctantly, when it was time to leave things as they were. Though nothing was complete, nor would it ever be, there was not much more he could give to his worlds that they would not soon make for themselves. 

Carefully, slowly, he drew back, settling into a quiet and comfortable corner of his cosmos. The stars created a rainbow blanket around him, the weightlessness of space offering a reprieve for his old, tired bones. Time became a dream, and he slept. 

With the craftsman resting, his inhabitants of Earth acted much like they always do when left without supervision. Poorly, and out of fear. 

The humans, though inherently docile, were widely acknowledged to be a powerful and unified force by the first beings. While this created a mutual understanding and veneration between the two groups, there was one among the first beings to invent something of his own; distrust. 

The delicate balance of life on Earth was far from perfect, and while the craftsman understood all too well that this is how it would always be, this particular being either would not or could not accept this concept. 

The humans. Two minds, two souls. They used these for nothing but time together, knowing nothing but each other. They learned and sang and through what remained in them of the craftsman, they invented. They progressed at an unprecedented rate, though everything was unprecedented at this point in time. 

The being grew restless as he watched, unable to take joy in his brothers and sisters creations the way that the craftsman was able to in them. Oddly enough, this made him resent them both, but not himself.

The humans, knowing nothing yet of deceit or betrayal, obediently came at the being’s beckons. The being, knowing not of what it was to be human, knew not of the pain it would cause them. 

The day that followed would cast shame into the hearts of all the first beings, so much and so deep that they could not bear to walk amongst the humans. They vowed to leave the Earth to search the stars for the craftsman, in the hopes he could reverse what had been done. 

Before they left, they stole away their rogue brother from the field of scarred and bloodied bodies scattered around him, though it was too late to spare any one of them. 

The humans wept and bled into the earth that had bore them. The plants, horrified by the gross tragedy they had witnessed, were stunned into silence, never to speak again.

The humans. Now equal in numbers as in souls, yet never as incomplete. They laid there, shaking, hurting, separated. Each body, cold and small, now only had two arms, two legs, and one face with two eyes. 

A face that learned for the first time just how much it could twist and contort to portray the agony it felt. Tears poured from their eyes, and there was no second set of hands to wipe them away. The companionship they had known their whole lives was gone, ripped from them in the most violent way. 

Their bruised chests felt almost hollow with the sorrowful pang of only one heartbeat. As some recovered, they sat up, desperately searching with wild, scared eyes, for the first face they’d seen. The first hands they’d held, the soul that was as precious to them as their own.  

For others, there was no recovery. The shock had been too much for their small, singular bodies, and the moments they spent on the ground, paralyzed by pain, their own anatomy a stranger to them, had been their last. 

Those that survived did what they could to move forward, never speaking of the day, or what they had lost, again. The pairs never were able to reunite, unsure of what their mates looked like now that they had their own bodies, if they had even made it through the separation. 

Time went on, as it tends to, though it passed slower than ever, healing no wounds. The being had been successful in his misguided mission. The humans never did recover, and though none of the first beings remained, any ability the humans had to overtake them, not that it had ever occurred to them to do so, had been lost. 

Some survivors, motivated either by bitterness or by hope, spent the rest of their lives searching for what they had lost. Listening for the sound of a laugh or a voice they knew as well as their own, searching for eyes that knew the same pain that never fully left them. 

Others, inspired, made do with what they had. They found consolation in the idea that while the others would never know the person they had lost, they could begin to know and care for the person they were now. 

The humans. Separated, but together nonetheless. Knowing what they had lost, and knowing it was all they had left to share between them. They kept on, small and new. 

Though slowed, their progress never stopped. They explored the earth, building and learning, despite their dulled minds. They continued, in the face of it all, to live. Generations passed, and the human mind was given the mercy of forgetting, though the new bodies would not be so lucky as to forget what they once were. 

The word for what they had been, soulmates, lost its meaning, though the next humans clung to it, shaping it to fit their way of life. It became a story, a small comfort to help with the oneness of their lives, not that they had ever known a different way. 

And yet, the new humans still seemed to feel, deep down, that there was something very wrong. Many searched for what would’ve been the soul that dwelled close enough to their own to touch it, even if they didn’t know what they were yearning for. 

The thing is, a feeling like that, a bond like that, was not weak enough or small enough to be left behind by time. To feel the beat of a heart that depended solely on the steady, constant thrum of your own; This would sit heavy on the minds of each and every one of them. No matter how far they strayed from what had been. 

More time. Always, more time. The new humans’ singularity led them to grow cold and vengeful. They learned of fire and of war. Perhaps in the being’s attempt to offset them, he had left behind the part of himself so unlike the craftsman. The part that had led him to do what he did. 

They strayed further and further from the hopes of those that came before them. The desperate, insane hope that the things they lost would never keep them from being kind. Now, that’s not to say all the new humans were a product of what had become of their former selves. 

Some were kind, many were hopeful, all were lonely. The wounds had faded generations ago, but the pain, although invisible, lingered. There was a certain selfishness to them that grew over time. As if they had all but forgotten the fierce loyalty that could be felt for a soul that was not their own. 

Even still, in spite of what had been lost, so remained those lucky few who could feel, who could remember, even if it was just for a moment, the impossible, phantom connection to another. 

When the wind was fair and the night quiet, one could feel a certain presence, a rightness. A relief. When the hopefulness paid off, because then, the loneliness was gone, replaced by the most indescribable sensation. 

It was there, in a small, unassuming apartment, tucked in a relatively unimportant part of town, that one of these moments occurred. In the late, dark night, A young woman sat, propped upright in her bed. She stared at the ceiling, one hand absentmindedly yet affectionately running over her rounded stomach. 

Suddenly, as if in response to her gentle touch, a soft flutter -slow at first- rippled across her abdomen, strong enough to feel under her hand.

An almost overwhelming feeling swelled within her. She understood then, what it was like to know a soul, so entwined with her own, that it felt as if it were a part of her. That the heart beating within her depended solely on the steady, constant thrum of her own. 

She lowered her head as close to her belly as her straining body would allow. She spoke, a soft and reassuring promise, to ears that could not yet hear. 

“I am here. You are not alone. You will be beautiful. You will be good.”

The words, so familiar, yet so ancient. The most distant echo of a promise made thousands and thousands of years ago, by an old craftsman to a new universe.