I've been described as an old soul and a hopeless romantic, and I often feel like I'm living in the wrong era. When I started looking into the concept of soul age, I found that maybe being an old soul means that we keep cycling the same lessons repeatedly until they clear. Could it be that old souls are just stubborn and doomed to repeat the same lessons life after life until we finally get it right?

I've always unknowingly been drawn to war and conflict and had a sense of duty to serve. Since I was a boy, I have felt a wave of sadness come over me when I watched old newsreel footage of the beach landings at Normandy that happened on my birthday 28 years prior. An uncanny feeling that somehow a life, my life, was cut incredibly short. I voiced early on that we, as Canadians, took Juno, one of many impossible beachheads invaded by the Allies that day. I've had many dreams about the massive landing craft door opening, storming onto the beach, only to leave my body moments later, feeling a sharp pain in my head. During the early 90s, Canadians made the news about their peacekeeping efforts in Croatia. The stories in the media and calls home from friends' relatives drew me to join the peacekeeping mission, one of the first that allowed UN soldiers to fight back when required. My mother's distraught words over finding out what I had done haunt me to this day.

Years later, I would look back over a string of failed relationships and wonder why I was consistently seeking out wounded people to share my life with. Had not having the time to live fully in past lives robbed me of the necessary skills to seek out healthy relationships, or was my nomadic upbringing to blame? Never being able to form lasting friendships certainly took its toll on my childhood, and the rejection I felt as a new kid in a small-town high school when I should have been building those skills certainly left me at a disadvantage when navigating teenage feelings. I knew my parents had spent nearly 50 years together, and all I wanted was the same. After a two-week courtship, they took a leap of faith and trusted each other, boarding a freighter bound for England after a small civil ceremony.

I had heard of hypnotic regressions and was eager to find out what would come up under hypnosis, so I sought out a practitioner. Being from a small town, I drove four hours to the city and spent almost six hours with one of the most amazing humans I have ever met. She knew all the right questions to ask and held space as I endlessly poured my heart out. During hypnosis, many instances of lives cut short came to the surface. Often walking, I would wander and not be accepted by the community I found myself in, resulting in conflict and a life ending early.

Find your nirvana, the opportunity is now.

The hypnosis session itself lasted 3 hours, and looking back, the insights have proved invaluable as my guidance council gave verbal instructions on how to proceed. Sometimes, we are offered a chance to break the loops, heal the trauma, and help others along the way. In healing others, we find what we are looking for in life. At that moment, I decided to make the shift and break the karmic loops.

A 50-year physical relationship is likely out of the question at this point in my life. However, the knowledge gained in that session about the soul being eternal and taking the time to find those connections will always be with me. My parents would revel about time on the freighter, drinking rum with the sailors, meandering through Europe in a worn-out used car, visiting places in Africa, and finally settling for a few years in New Zealand to start a family. Still, I feel like my wandering has stopped. After countless Canadian cities and small towns, I'm finally comfortable with who I am and where I want to be, but I always keep a foot in that door. Maybe that's still the nomad in me.

"You aren't going to leave me like that again" were the words that will haunt me forever. It was as if she unconsciously knew that war had separated us in a previous life. However, she never remembered saying it or, at least, would not admit to it for fear of acknowledging that there was something more than the heaven and hell she was raised with. I never did get to serve; I was born prematurely, and as a result, my eyes were damaged, something the Forces were not interested in taking on at the time. Call it divine intervention; that loop was broken at birth, but I still searched for that thrill of conflict. I even volunteered as a firefighter for several years, as risking my life to save others felt like the right thing to do, but the unstructured interpersonal interactions and toxicity inherent in that particular department took their toll, and I found myself not needing that part of my life anymore. Similarly, the tumultuous personal relationships that plagued me have mostly fallen away and continue to do so as my life shifts, opening up space for truly amazing people to come in.



It just might be that through brute force and ignorance, mixed in with a bit of divine intervention, this "old soul" has finally learned a few valuable lessons. This journey isn't over, and I can't wait to see what the next 50 years bring.