Instructions for Building a Soul

Step One: Begin with the quiet.

Not the silence of empty rooms or lost voices — but the quiet that lingers just before a heartbeat. The kind that lives inside lullabies never sung and embraces that never happened.

She woke in the sky — not born, but assembled. A shape, a presence, a maybe. No name yet. No memories. Just a soft hum in her chest like the engine of a dream warming up.

“Welcome,” said the voice. Not loud. Not kind. Just there.

“You’re going to learn how to be real.”

Step Two: Add a heart, but do not turn it on.

Let it sit inside the chest like a clock without hands. Time must be earned.

She floated through places that resembled childhood but didn’t belong to her — a broken swing. A pair of shoes tied too tight. A mother’s laugh swallowed by exhaustion. A father’s hand raised, then lowered, but not gently.

Each memory wasn’t hers… and yet… she felt something stir. Something ache.

“What is this?” she asked.

“It’s empathy,” said the voice. “It always hurts a little.”

Step Three: Introduce contradictions.

Give her anger and gentleness. Give her desire and distance. Let her feel love beside fear.

In her next lesson, she was dropped into a small moment in a stranger’s life — a girl on a bus, staring out a rain-slicked window, headphones on. On the outside, nothing remarkable.

But inside? Grief clung to her like a second coat. Her brother had died the week before. No one at school asked how she was. No one really wanted to know.

The soul-in-training sat beside her, invisible. She couldn’t touch. Couldn’t speak.

So she listened.

And she felt. Not in words, but in waves.

By the time the bus stopped, she was crying — and she didn’t know why.

“Why did I feel her pain?”

“Because now you are starting to have a soul.”

Step Four: Teach them to choose.

A soul isn’t just what you feel — it’s what you do because you feel.

She was placed in a dream — a field of decisions, glowing paths all around her. Each step forward meant another path faded behind. In one direction, there was safety. In another, purpose. In another, love — but it flickered like it might not last.

She stood still for a long time.

“I don’t know what to choose,” she whispered.

The voice didn’t answer.

So she walked. Toward the one that scared her most.

And something inside her clicked.

Step Five: Give them a flaw.

Without it, they cannot grow.

She chose envy. It tasted like rust and regret.

When she saw joy in others, she crumbled. When she failed, she blamed. When someone loved her, she pushed them away just to see if they’d come back.

It was ugly. It was hers.

She learned to sit with it. To breathe through it. To say, “This part of me is not all of me.”

Step Six: Let them break.

And then... see what they do with the pieces.

She fell — hard. Into a life she hadn’t expected. She was human now. With a job, rent, a dying houseplant, and a dog that only liked her roommate.

One day, her chest ached. The heart — now ticking — stuttered. She curled into herself and whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

And still... she got up. She made tea. She smiled at a stranger. She wrote a letter she’d never send.

That night, she looked in the mirror. Tired. Flawed. Glowing.

“I think I have one now,” she said softly.

“A soul?”

“No. A self.”

Final Step: Release them.

Let them walk the world knowing nothing is perfect — and choosing to care anyway.

Let them find music that makes them cry and people who make them laugh and days that break their hearts in the best and worst ways.

Let them be haunted by what they cannot fix and still try to fix it.

Let them forget the instructions.

Let them live.

And if you ever meet one — a person who feels like old stars and future hope — you’ll know:

They built their soul, one imperfect step at a time.

And they’re still building.

Just like you.