I recently watched the new Netflix movie “The Half of It” and two seconds in, I was already hooked. What can I say, I’m a hopeless romantic and a sucker for cheesy romance films. It starts off with the main character, Ellie Chu, talking about how the Ancient Greeks believed that humans started off as two people combined and when they felt threatened, split them up to wander Earth in search of their other half. If you’re anything like me, you so desperately want to believe in something so amazing like that. That there’s someone out there, specifically made for you.
So let’s talk about it.
While I grew up reading romance novels about girls meeting that guy who gave them butterflies and made their toes curl, I’m starting to wonder if it’s real. I’ve had boyfriends and in my 20 years of living, I have sure met a sea of guys. But not one of them has ever made my heart skip a beat or had me feeling all twisty inside.
So is it true? Is there really one person out there that makes your soul complete? And if so, wouldn’t that mean then that our destinies are already predetermined to get us to them?
I’ve always been a pretty rational thinker, especially when it comes to love. Watching my friends cry over crappy guys, knowing that my mother had children with two different men before finding the one she wanted to spend her whole life with, I’ve never felt the need to experience love outside of books and movies. They give me the feelings I want to feel but honestly have never seen.
My grandmother always told me that boys are like shoes, you have to try them all on until you find the perfect pair. And yet, part of me still hopes that the right shoes will fall into my lap, without ever trying them on. I’m window-shopping, for now, it seems.
If the Ancient Greeks were right, and we really spend our whole life searching until we find our other half, does that mean that our choices aren’t really ours? I’ve also always thought that we live like those books where each decision you make could lead to a different ending. I’ve never really believed in God or that there’s a plan for us. I think that we make our own destiny. But if that were true, then there’d be a possibility of never finding our other half.
However, if it is true, then wouldn’t that just make us puppets in His little play, and no matter what we think we’re deciding, in the end, we’ll be exactly where He wants us to be. And while this started with a talk about love, it leads me to question whether bad things that happened were already predetermined to occur or not. This also leads me to wonder whether or not people are destined for a good life or a bad one, a long one or a short one, and why. If you never meet your other half, do they become someone else’s or are they left wandering the Earth in search of something they’ll never find?
For Ellie, she found someone who understood her and gave her butterflies, in her hometown of all places. Was she destined to find love sooner than most? And why? Why do some people find their other half so quickly and others may never find them at all?
Sometimes I think I’m crazy that these questions are always on my mind, but maybe they’re on yours too.