Somewhere in the world, there is a person who would understand me completely.
I do not know her name. I do not know her face. I know only that she exists—statistically, mathematically, inevitably. Among eight billion people, someone carries the exact frequency that matches mine. Someone laughs at the same absurdities, aches at the same injustices, falls silent at the same mysteries.
She might live in a village in Siberia. She might sell vegetables in a market in Peru. She might be a teacher in a small town in Norway, looking out the window at snow, feeling an inexplicable emptiness she cannot name.
We will probably never meet.
This is the cruelty of geography. The earth is vast, and we are small. My soulmate—if such a word means anything—could be separated from me by oceans, mountains, deserts. She speaks a language I will never learn. She walks streets I will never see. She lives an entire life, birth to death, without knowing I exist.
And I live mine without knowing she exists.
I think about this sometimes when I cannot sleep. The mathematics of it. If my perfect match is one in a million, there are eight thousand of her scattered across the planet. But one in a million is optimistic. True compatibility—the kind where you finish each other’s thoughts, where silence feels like conversation, where being together requires no effort—this is rarer. Much rarer.
Perhaps one in ten million. Perhaps one in a hundred million. The numbers grow, and the probability of meeting shrinks until it becomes nearly zero.
My friend Rahim married a good woman. They are compatible in the ways that matter for daily life—shared values, similar backgrounds, aligned goals. They have built a functional partnership. They are content.
But once, late at night, Rahim told me something he has never told his wife. He said: “I sometimes feel there is someone out there who would understand me in a way she cannot. Someone who would see the parts I keep hidden. I love my wife. But I wonder about the one I never met.”
I did not tell him he was being foolish. I did not tell him to be grateful for what he has. I understood exactly what he meant.
We are all carrying this quiet knowledge: that the person beside us, however good, however loved, is probably not the person most suited to our soul. That person is elsewhere. That person is unreachable. That person is looking at the same moon we look at, wondering the same things.
Technology promised to solve this. The internet connected us across continents. Dating apps offered algorithms that would find our matches. We believed we could finally search the whole world for the one who fit.
But the apps do not search the whole world. They search our neighborhoods, our social classes, our demographic brackets. They match us with people who look like us, earn like us, believe like us. The Siberian villager does not appear in my feed. The woman in the Peruvian market never creates a profile. The teacher in Norway uses a different app, in a different language, on a different continent.
The connectivity is an illusion. We are still trapped by geography. The walls are just invisible now.
I wonder sometimes what she is doing. The one I will never meet. Is she happy? Has she found someone who is close enough, good enough, compatible enough to build a life with? Does she ever feel, in quiet moments, that something is missing—someone is missing—without knowing who or where?
Perhaps she does. Perhaps, at the exact moment I feel that inexplicable longing, she feels it too. Scientists talk about quantum entanglement—particles that remain connected across infinite distances, responding to each other instantaneously. Perhaps souls work the same way. Perhaps we are entangled, she and I, feeling each other’s absence across the curve of the earth.
This is probably fantasy. Probably the longing is just loneliness, dressed in romantic clothing. Probably there is no soulmate, no perfect match, no one person who would complete what feels incomplete.
But I am not sure. I am not sure of anything.
What I know is this: the world is full of people I will never meet. Millions of them. Billions. Each one carries a universe inside their head—thoughts, feelings, experiences as rich and complex as my own. Among these billions, some would bore me. Some would repel me. Some would become friends. And some—a few, scattered across continents—would feel like coming home.
I will meet almost none of them. The ones I meet will be determined by accident of birth, geography, circumstance. I will love who is available, not who is ideal. I will build my life with the people geography allows me to reach.
This is not tragedy. This is simply how it is. We are finite creatures in an infinite world. We cannot meet everyone. We cannot search every village and city and mountain town for the one who fits. We work with what we have. We love who we find. We make it enough.
But sometimes, on quiet nights, I let myself wonder. I imagine her—this woman I will never know—sitting somewhere far away, looking at stars that are the same stars I see. I imagine her feeling that something is missing. I imagine her sensing, without evidence or explanation, that someone out there would understand.
And for a moment, across all that distance, we are connected. Not by meeting. Not by knowing. Just by the shared ache of almost. The parallel wondering. The identical question asked to an indifferent sky.
Is someone out there meant for me?
The universe knows. The universe is not telling.
So we live with the uncertainty. We love who we can reach. We carry the quiet knowledge of all the lives unlived, all the connections unmade, all the soulmates scattered across a world too big to search.
Somewhere in Siberia, in Peru, in Norway, in a place I cannot imagine—she exists.
I hope she is happy.
I hope, sometimes, she wonders too.
That is all we have. The wondering.
It will have to be enough.