Dark Matter Mind

Finding myself in the theater for the third time in less than a week, willingly putting myself through the agony and the joy that is Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” I ask myself why this film has such a profound effect on me. Will I cry uncontrollably every time I watch it? I’m not sure the film grips me for quite the same reason as most viewers. Or maybe it does, and I am just as drawn to the notion of soul crushing emotion as every other loving being.

Cathy and Heathcliff share a tethering. There is something ancient about their love, even though they meet at ten years old and only live another twenty or so years in each other’s presence. Their connection feels older than circumstance itself. It is the way they describe being unable to understand life without the other. Their souls feel made of the same material, as if their relationship is not simply part of their lives but integral to their personhood. Whatever constitutes the intricacies that shape them individually seems equally shared between them.

Because of that kind of connection, their love makes me think about the notion of the soul contract, the theory that before entering a new state of existence, the “soul” is granted knowledge of every happiness and every tragedy it will endure along this timeline before it ever begins to experience it. The beauty of the theory is that even though we are privy to every pain, we enter this existence under the belief that the agony is worth the balance of joy. We are willing to live through excruciating suffering so that we may also live through unimaginable joy and love.

If that is true, then suffering is not accidental. We continue to live through these cycles so that we may uncover a truth that we choose to hide from ourselves in order to understand the importance of the lesson over and over again. To what end?

I imagine Cathy and Heathcliff rendering their soul contracts. I believe the terms of their agreement are that they are given the gift of such a deep, unending, soul altering, ancient love in exchange for the lessons of trust, communication, the pursuit of happiness, and the acceptance of oneself living inside the absurdity of life.

In some ways, I think the terms of their agreement are probably not unlike many lives being lived in this very moment. We are either given this love in the hopes that we make the correct choices to retain and tend to such incredible companionship, or we choose unwisely and are doomed to live through the pain that reminds us that perhaps the purpose of this existence is that we continue to make the choices that lead us back to our most authentic selves. It is our duty to forsake what we believe to be the “right” choice, based on fabricated rules and barriers that this particular existence places onto us. The lesson is to choose that which feeds your soul, and not what the projected assumption of soul feeding choices may appear to be.

And this is where the story stops being confined to their lives and begins to mirror our own.

Cathy chooses what she believes she has no other choice but to choose. She chooses to provide for her family, to create a platform for Heathcliff, and yes, also to be cared for and adored by Edgar Linton. Cathy tries to establish a life that “makes logistical sense” given the rules of engagement in her timeline. It is not until she suffers through the emptiness and agony that is the loss of Heathcliff, as well as the fire and fulfillment of his return, that the cost of that decision becomes clear.

The purpose of these emotions that she has agreed to experience is to teach her that she made an incorrect decision. They demonstrate the importance of choosing her soul over what she believes to be the practical purposes of this life.

And if that is the lesson Cathy agreed to experience, perhaps we have agreed to something similar.

So perhaps I am one of the few, but I imagine it leaves the viewer of the film to wonder: what is the fulfillment of my soul that I am not actively choosing? What agony might befall me if I continue down the path of dimming my light, of pleasing all other people in my life before myself? What am I destroying by turning away from the intricacies of what makes me strange and interesting and complex and passionate? Will I experience the pain that is my soul being torn from me to satisfy some fabricated regulations? That fulfillment may not necessarily come from another human in the way that it does for Cathy and Heathcliff, but it absolutely poses the question, what if it is?

What if there is love like the one Cathy and Heathcliff possess, and you get to experience it in all sorts of ways throughout your life. Each time you choose whatever it is that lights you on fire, you are given the opportunity to experience a type of joy you did not know could exist. The story, then, becomes about fearlessness. A willingness to cultivate a life for you, because otherwise what is the point of existing? Wasting time making choices for any other reason than to inject your experiences with as much fulfillment as possible is why we feel anything at all. The pain and the joy are like guardrails guiding us to the experiences meant to teach us the limitlessness of love.

At the end of the film there is a heart wrenching repriese back to a declaration Heathcliff makes to Cathy as a child, a promise to love her forever until the end of time. Before the end of the movie, you see bits of their lives culminating in a gorgeous scene on the moors where they hold each other, truly happy to be seen and loved by the other. A window into what could have been possible for them. I choose to believe this is another existence, one in which they made the right choices. A version that is filled with less pain and fewer obstacles. For they will live in the cycles of each other for all of eternity. That is their contract. To be with one another always is to traverse through each iteration in every timeline. To experience those in which they love each other for decades and those in which they experience each other for only a short while. Iterations of life and iterations of death. Planes of love and planes of insurmountable suffering.

Their gift is to be tethered to each other. Their gift is to fulfill one another through whichever version of their lives they must endure in order to do so.

And perhaps that is the comfort in it all.

This is why I do not fear the unknown choice. For I know that whatever soul contract I agreed to, I would not lead myself down a path where this kind of soul fulfillment does not live. I trust myself implicitly. I trust that the pain has purpose. I trust that the longing is directional. I trust that even the scenic routes are leading me somewhere necessary.

No matter what may come in this iteration, it is guiding me back to that which makes me the most authentic version of myself. Back to the choices that feel alive. Back to the love that feels ancient. Back to the parts of me that refuse to be quieted.

Not just the tragedy. Not just the romance. But the reminder that somewhere beneath the fear and the performance and the compromise, there is always a tether pulling us toward the life we were meant to choose.

And if time is not linear, if every possible iteration already exists somewhere beyond our perception, then “over and over again” does not mean repetition along a straight line. It means return to alignment. Return to truth. Return to the version of ourselves that feels most alive. Perhaps all possible choices already live within us, and life is simply the experience of inhabiting them, one awareness at a time.

Life is the act of making those choices over and over again.