How To Love An Old Soul

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When you fall in love with an old soul, you fall in love with the beautiful side of slowness. You fall in love with patience, with tender quietness, with the experience of knowing someone in a way you’ve never known anyone else.

When you fall in love with an old soul, you fall in love with questions, with curiosity, with wondering why things happen the way they do and why people made the choices that they did. You fall in love with someone who just wants to know things, and feel things, and understand things – someone who feels like so much is happening in the world at once that they can’t even close their eyes for a second, for fear of missing it. You fall in love with someone who wants to see all of this, and live all this – slowly enough to absorb it and process it and completely grasp it.

Don’t confuse an ‘old soul’ with someone who just wants to sit back and watch life happen to other people. Don’t confuse an ‘old soul’ with someone who hates late nights or exciting experiences or unexpected adventures. An old soul cares about these things just as much as someone who seems drenched in youth.

The difference with an old soul is that they want to memorize every detail of every experience. They want to be in the center of every moment and to feel it deeply and to think about it later. They don’t want to just ‘go out’ because it’s Friday and they think they should go out. They don’t want to travel just because they think they are supposed to at this age. An old soul doesn’t do anything half-heartedly. They do everything deliberately, with a lot of thought and curiosity and focus. They don’t not care about the photos and the stories and the experiences that come with each trip or adventure or night out, the way most of us do. They just care more about feeling a deep connection with you while doing and living these things.

Don’t worry about reassuring them that they’re normal. They know that they are normal. They also know that their idea of ‘normal’ is just a little different from their peers’ ideas of ‘normal.’

They understand that phones are useful and social media can be fun and the world is fast and constantly changing. But sometimes, they also just want to sit down and look at you in the eye and touch your fingers and be alone with you. They want to forget about the constant stimulation and the constant distractions in the world that exists outside the two of you – just for a second, so that they can be fully in this moment with you and remember how your laugh sounds and what it feels like to be vulnerable with someone.

When you fall in love with an old soul, you fall in love with stillness, with calm, with emotional intimacy. You know what it feels like to look at someone and be totally seen, to speak to them and know that to them, right now, you are the most interesting thing in the world, and you don’t have to earn their attention or demand it or beg for it. When you fall in love with an old soul, you know what it feels like to finally see the world the way we were probably meant to – with wonder, with awe, with a bright reverence for something as simple as a really blue flower or a really warm night or a really lovely dinner where you leave it feeling lighter and more relaxed and less alone.

When you fall in love with an old soul, what you’re really falling in love with is someone who reminds you to look at the world with excitement and wonder and fascination – the way you used to do when you were a kid. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

I’m a staff writer for Thought Catalog. I like comedy and improv. I live in Chicago. My Uber rating is just okay.

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