I spent the weekend watching Xena on Netflix. (No comments on the Xena thing. I used to watch it when I was a teenager and was kind of happy to find it on Netflix Instant Play. Nostalgia or something.)
Anyway, in the episode “Prometheus,” Prometheus himself is imprisoned by Hera and all the gifts of mankind start to vanish (the gift of healing, gift of fire, etc). Hercules comes to help Xena free Prometheus and in the process Iolaus, Hercules’ sidekick, gets injured. Bad news when the gift of healing has been taken away.
So Xena and Hercules forge ahead while Gabrielle, Xena’s sidekick, stays with the dying Iolaus. To comfort him, she tells him stories. Right as Iolaus is passing out, she tells him this story:
“Once a long, long time ago, all people had two heads and four legs. Then the gods threw down thunder bolts, that split everyone into two. Each then had two legs and one head, the the separation left both sides with a desperate yearning to be reunited because they each shared the same soul. And ever since then, all people spend the rest of their life searching for the other half of their soul.”
Anyway, long story short, Xena and Hercules save the day and Iolaus lives. Yay!
Okay, forgive the totally geeky moment because there is a point to this entire post. It’s the story Gabrielle told Iolaus that I really wanted to share. For some reason, it really struck a chord with me. I mean, I don’t know much about life and love, but I think that whatever writer wrote that “story” had a better understanding that I do.
