Once Upon A Lifetime Past

I couldn’t tell you how old I was. Seven or eight, maybe. However old I was, though, I was old enough to know what I believed. And what I absolutely did not believe was that my Mum had been killed by Jack the Ripper in a past life, like her meditation session had seemingly ‘revealed’. Ridiculous. Impossible. Absurd.

But I’ll get back to Jack a little later, shall I?

First: some background.

As I’ve mentioned in some of my earlier posts, I was a highly sensitive child. A soft little muffin, and a deep one at that. But what I also seemed to be was an ‘old soul’, and none of the adults in my life ever were quite able to explain how that part of me came about.

The ‘old soul-ness’ kept popping up all the way through my teenage years and manifested in all sorts of different ways. Perhaps one of the most profound came in the form of a monologue I performed in the year eleven drama class play. It was the science teacher who mentioned it. He said—in fact, his whole entire body said— it was surely impossible for a sixteen-year-old to really know the feeling of ‘glass grinding in my spirit.’

‘How did you know?’ he asked, his eyes far more serious now than they had been when he explained to me that a Bunsen burner works best when it’s actually switched on.

‘Umm. I’m not sure,’ I said, slightly alarmed by the intensity of his usually playful eyes. It was an odd thing, I agreed, and honestly, I didn’t know where the depth of my performance had come from. But after seeing those eyes of his change so drastically…part of me wondered.

And part of me has wondered ever since.

So let’s get back to Jack then, shall we, and how he very rudely slaughtered my Mother once upon a lifetime’s past. Because it sounds bloody ridiculous, doesn’t it? Sounds impossible and absolutely, entirely absurd.

Well…yes. It does.

But I have to tell you, I’m not so sure anymore. As a matter of fact, I have been very seriously rethinking the nature of just about everything in this old universe of ours. And I’m thinking, now, that maybe—just very slightly maybe—my Mum might have been right about Jack.

What if the unexplainable really could be explained by remembering further back in time? What if the uncanny childhood wisdom that so many young children seem to possess, actually does come from someplace they have actually been before? Like…another life, perhaps?

Now wouldn’t that be something else.