Scott's philosophy on soul mates is as follows...they don't exist.
it's a personal opinion of mine that might change once i get into a
relationship and meet the right girl, but as of now, i don't believe they
exist.  i think there are at least 10 or 15 here for you...maybe even a
couple hundred if you are not picky.  here's why:

        1)  WE ARE PEONS IN THE GAME OF LIFE.  if life were a chess board,
you wouldn't even be a pawn....you'd be a particle of dust that collects
ON that pawn when no one uses it.  there are like 6 billion people in this
world.  you probably only know .0001% of them in your entire lifetime.
and among them, only a handful of them would you know well enough to say
that you know them on a deeper level.  to have the audacity to say that of
the tiny percentage of people you know, the one you marry is the ONLY
person in the world meant for you is being just plain ignorant.  you don't
think that of the other 5.5 billion people in the world, not a single
other person would be just as compatible with you?

        2)  FATE ONLY TAKES YOU SO FAR.  okay, we got past point one.
some people may say, well, they are your soul mates b/c of all the
potential people you could have hooked up with, FATE has brought you to
your spouse.  the two of you were destined to be together.  well, i
believe that fate only goes so far.  i believe that it provides you with
opportunities, but it never takes you ALL THE WAY.  i believe that once
the opportunities are presented, it is up to YOU to do something about it.
you have to take responsibility for what happens...you can't just sit
there all day and expect fate to save you.  and since you have partial
control over your own destiny, one can conclude that there may be SEVERAL
soul mates out there...its just that some of them you never acted upon.
so it's not that destiny necessarily led you to a particular person, but
you led yourself there...therefore there may be others out there, too.

        3)  THE CHINA FACTOR.  the china factor goes like this.  china is
HUGE.  so huge that you can take all the chinese in china and line them up
as lemmings....and have them walk into the ocean at a constant
pace...and with the rate at which they multiply would allow them to let
the line continue on forever.  forever!  and you think the chinese
language has lots of characters???  CHINA has lots of characters!
billions of different characters!  and they are all potential soulmates.
i bet there are more chinese people than there are bricks that make up the
Great Wall.  and since almot half of the  world's population is in china,
one can assume that china holds a good number of your "soulmates", too.
you probably got 6 or 7 "soulmates" living in china right now, but you just
don't know b/c they are on the other side of the world...and because they
are chinese...and you may not be (even though the odds are, you are!
hahaha)  but there are probably chinese versions of your spouse all over
china.  same personalities, same laugh, etc.  imagize chinese bizzarro
versions of people you know running all around mainland china.  man,
that's the life.

        in conclusion, one must know that i will one day hold my wife
closely next to me...look her in the eye...and say, "honey, you are the
only woman for me...we were meant to be.  You are truly one of a kind,
if you exclude xialiang tsu, quingpah lao, shiao tsing ma, and a few other
girls....but i'm glad i met you."  isn't that romantic? =)
SOULMATES
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