THE LOST SOUL

NOT DEAD. JUST FORGOTTEN.

When we hear the words lost soul, we usually picture somebody wandering through life with nowhere to go. But I think a person can know exactly where they are and still be completely lost.

Look at the old photograph in the artwork. That person existed before whatever happened next. There were birthdays, arguments, people they loved, mistakes they made, places they wanted to go. Sometimes when we meet somebody at the worst point of their life, we forget there was an entire story before we arrived.

Then there’s the clock.

How long can somebody be lost? A week? Ten years? Half a lifetime? Time keeps moving whether somebody is moving with it or not. That’s probably one of the cruelest parts. The world doesn’t stop and wait while somebody tries to find their way back.

The broken heart opens another door. People don’t always get lost because they made one terrible decision. Sometimes somebody dies. A marriage disappears. A family breaks apart. A job that gave somebody purpose is gone. One piece falls, then another, and eventually the person standing in the wreckage doesn’t recognize their own life anymore.

The book makes me wonder about the stories we never get to read.

We pass strangers every day without knowing what happened five minutes before we saw them, never mind five years. The person sitting alone on the bus, sleeping in a shelter, staring through a window or talking to themselves may have a history nobody bothered to ask about.

Then there’s the chess piece.

Life can feel like that sometimes. One bad move doesn’t necessarily end the game, but enough wrong moves, bad timing and circumstances outside your control can leave you wondering where the hell you’re supposed to move next.

And then the lock.

That may be the hardest one.

You can stand beside somebody and still not be able to reach them. The door might be locked by fear, shame, pain, memory, distrust or something we cannot see from the outside. We can knock, but ultimately there has to be some way for that door to open.

That’s why I like the smallest detail in this image the most.

Underneath The Lost Soul is a doorway with light coming through it.

The person hasn’t reached it yet.

But it’s there.

A SONG THAT RESONATES WITH THIS SYMBOL

LOST SOULS

I wrote Lost Souls from a much more serious and real place. It looks at people whose lives and inner worlds can become so disrupted that the rest of us may not understand what we’re seeing. I’m leaving that complete story for the song page because it deserves its own space.

For this symbol, I want to leave one thought instead.

Before deciding somebody is lost, maybe we should remember something:

You can’t know how far away someone is until you know where they started.

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