I get asked a lot about old souls and new/young souls. People are told they are old, that they are new, that someone they know is old or new and then they want to know what that means. The hard part for me is that it means a whole lot and a whole lot of nothing at the same time.
We rarely use the terms old or new except in a judgmental way. It’s “new in box”, they are a “newbie”, “he/she is new to this”, “they’re an oldtimer”, “you’re too old for that”, “you’re too young for that”, “you’ll figure it out when you’re older” the list goes on and on. The terms don’t actually mean a whole lot in and of themselves. Thy are more the broad stroke divider line we use to separate something into a category: good/bad, useful/not useful, capable/not capable, interesting/not interesting.
It’s handy short hand. In spiritual communities it’s used a lot in judging someone’s behavior. If they are a young soul then they are less mature than the speaker, doing things they don’t like and possibly causing disruption or drama. If they are an old soul they are wise or give generously of their time/resources/money, do things the way the speaker likes, is usually their friend or is someone they’d like for a friend. These are generalizations, but most of us will recognize this trend.
So here’s why I have to take a moment when someone asks me this question. I have to translate the generic language into what they actually mean, whether they are talking about the reincarnation cycle, about human embodiments or other types of embodiment or physical realities or the maturity level of the soul. Once I know that I can throw out the terms and actually answer the question. Part of my answer will always include a bit of information about how souls are way more complex than that kind of category and those categories have been misunderstood, misused, and mangled so that they don’t have a ton of meaning. That takes the conversation into way more relevant and interesting directions.
Because, here’s the kicker, time is only linear here so the notion that a soul is living in linear time and therefore aging is ludicrous! Doesn’t actually happen that way. It’s like trying to measure a pencil dot on a piece of paper by watering your plants. The two have no real relevance to each other. So moral of the story, don’t be ageist about souls. Just like in real life, age doesn’t actually matter, it’s the personality, the perspective and the actions of the person that does. (And since this embodied life isn’t necessarily indicative of who they are as a soul since they might be acting out a role or focusing on one particular lesson, you should probably not worry about it anyway. Just sayin…)