The Spark of the Human Soul, and our Attempts to Understand it

Visual Representation of a generic, spark.

The spark. The inhuman spark, placed deep within the human body. The spark, with all of its imperfections, all of its minutiae, its small volts of electricity running back and forth, in random moments - all at once. The spark that you can never truly see all at once, for it is in a state of perpetual motion. Indeed, a moving picture, ever changing and never-stagnant, and a constant subject of interest to those that deem it worthy to be studied. Such is the nature of the spark of human life - no… more than that. That IS the spark of the human soul. I first encountered such a spark my freshman year of high-school, in a discussion of famous American classics including The Sun aAlso Rises, Things Fall Apart, and A Bend in the River. That was the first time I felt the bell of literature truly resonate within me, creating a sound that vibrated on the same frequency of my peers for the first time. Indeed, that was the first time I’d felt truly understood, felt, believed in. The spark of my soul had been harnessed by the books I’d read, travelling to those souls of those around me, both influencing and being influenced by them. 

But allow me to speak more on what I believe the purpose of this demonstration of the human soul really represents. To me, it's simple: such is the meaning of art. As far as I’m concerned, “art” merely is a method of connecting two people: the artist and the viewer, in a meaningful way. Indeed, those two sparks, forged of different metals, in different circumstances, placed in different environments, try to communicate with each other on a shared frequency, and resonate. And true art achieves it, no matter if it’s poorly, with normalcy, or beautifully. As long as such a relationship exists between the artists and the viewer anything at all can be art. 

In contrast, the role of literature is NOT meant to be the same as art. Rather, literature’s goal is like that of a cartographer: dutifully mapping out the structure of the human soul, the human condition - trying desperately to predict and record all of those changes that occur perpetually… as a result, their result is often incomplete, only representative of a small fraction of the total human experience. Indeed, such demonstrations often are reflective of the author's own life, and their values, biases, and perspectives make their way into their interpretation of the world in multiple ways in their work of literature. Yet - that’s the beauty of it, is it not? In the author’s desperate gamble to try to record down the thoughts, legacies, values of his characters - in his attempt to make a stab at what being a human is - he indirectly creates a connection between him and his readers… he creates art in the process. Something beautiful is created in the pressure of the world, and the horrible nature of it all… Art was created at the crux of it all. 

Our human spark both functions as an individual identity, and as a subset a larger, societal spark, that envisions all of us, together. It represents our ideals, values, personalities, and thoughts - all in one. Art and literature, they merely try to communicate that imperfect being, everchanging. I hope to understand my own spark to a greater extent as I travel through this life.