There is an amazing thought experiment called the Freaky Friday thought experiment.
The thought experiment is based on the 1976 film Freaky Friday, which was remade in 2013 starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. The 1976 film launched a genre of films called “body-swap” movies. There was even one called The Change-Up in 2011, starring Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman. The premise of the films is usually the same. Somehow, usually through both peoples’ wishing and the supernatural, two characters switch bodies. In other words, their souls switch. Each character’s soul enters the other’s body. Therefore each person’s soul is in the wrong body. And inevitably, each character through this body-swap, learns that the grass is not always greener on the other side.
The genius of this narrative is that it reveals to us what a soul is. Because the soul is what is swapped into the new body. In the thought experiment of the body swap, we realize that the soul is two things; a person’s memories, and their disposition toward those memories. That is what switches over. As we noted above, it is the disposition of the person that grows through the body swap, usually to a disposition of “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.”
So again, our soul seems to be our memories combined with our disposition toward our memories.
So the cure to a better soul is simple. Garden better memories, and a better disposition. You can start today. You can pay attention to what you pay attention to. And you can shift your attention to any realms that create better memories. And that shift in attention to environments that create better memories for you will be the change in disposition that sets your soul on the right path.
