Yes – it really is that deep, and we’re sorry.

Read more: A Guide to Old Souls

Being an old soul is like leaving a porch light on for a stranger. You don’t know when and if they’re coming, but a part of you suspects. Anticipates – like the sunlight that trickles through the clouds on rainy days. Because the rain? It doesn’t last; but the light does. So, you flick on the front porch light and allow it to shine, in hope it paves the way for a someone – somewhere – to come home. Where you’ll be sitting, with a steaming mug of tea in your hand and your chin turned toward the night, soaking in the stars. Because you don’t fear the dark, not really. You’ve sat in it before and felt the steady cloak of the unknown. You are an old soul.

This is one of my favorite posts because its structure ebbs and flows, much like the human spirit. It is unencumbered by a full-circle closures or organization. It simply moves through the moment with many messages, which boil down to this: old souls lead complicated lives driven by deep emotions that, while inconvenient for progress, fuel all our evolution. Old souls live between the lines of what has been, what is, and what will be. We feel deeply. We see deeply. And sometimes we lament such insight because it keeps us on the sidelines of wildly adventures, with wildly lessons.

How to Spot an Old Soul

They say you can recognize other old souls. This hasn’t been my experience. I find that like-minded fiends keep their wizened smarts close to their chest, buried beneath badges of honor and shame. The shame isn’t the burning kind, but the burdening kind – the kind that says: “Hey, I’m sorry I’m have this heaviness around me. I don’t mean to. It’s just always been there.”  

That wizened shame fuels much of my life. While I wear my experience proudly, I also scowl at it. I didn’t… have the typical wild abandon of childhood and young adulthood. I grew up fast – faster than I ever desired. Lessons compiled like old law school textbooks through the halls of my memories. I’d pick them up occasionally – rifle through a few favorite lessons, pages – and set them back down. Eventually, I donated those books through long conversations and blog posts that bleed practicality in a simple way. I didn’t need their presence anymore to remind me of what I’d won, learned.

But I don’t brandish that advice unless you ask. I don’t gaze longingly at coffee pub walls and ponder the meaning of life (I save that for the privacy of my home). I force myself through the motions of living as everyone else does, just with this threadbare acknowledgement that everything has a larger purpose. What that purpose is? Who the hell knows – I just know it exists, throbbing like a heartbeat beneath the mundane.

Some say that old souls are often Capricorns, cancers, Pisces and Aquarius. I also think Sagittarius belongs on this list, and any placements with heavy 12^th house placements, as these placements aim for emotional healing and respite.

Our friends and love interests tend to be older. I always joke that the average age range for my friends is somewhere between 28 – 82, with the mean being somewhere around 60. I’ve always been drawn to older men: they’re calmer, more confident. Less bullshit and yellow tape. In times I’ve gone after love interests closer to my own age, the results were disastrous. It was the equivalent of this meme:

Otherwise, I don’t think you can know an old soul until you truly connect with us. Talk with us, in an open way where advice can flow. Otherwise, we appear just as everyone else – hard to pin down, except if you look into our eyes a little longer than usual. The eyes are difficult to hide – as they speak the secret truths we keep inside.

Life Among the Living

Being an old soul carries a deep appreciation of the heavy emotional seasons that pass, often unbidden. Some days can feel heavy with an invisible emotional weight that you swore you handled – addressed, solved – but it swims to the surface, ripe for examination. While others are almost light and childlike, like youth who dance in the buxom rays of a loud summer day. There is little in between – old souls frequently experience this extremely oscillation between lightness and heaviness. In a way, it’s poetic: the world allows us to freely experience what has always felt elusive, abandoned. One extreme to the other. For me, the childlike extreme usually occurs somewhere in nature, where the sheer face of a mountainside yawns wide and life slows.

If you’re reading this around the end of July 2026 – holy shit, what a season. July has simultaneously been the longest and most emotionally turbulent month I can remember. There is something about reaching beyond the half-point in the year that trips an invisible wire: What are we doing? Where are we going? Why are we still holding onto feelings, people, and things we can no longer hold?

The older I get, the more I agonize over the last question. Carrying heavy things is, well, heavy – heavier still when you realize you shouldn’t be carrying them anymore. So, you set them down. You deal with them. You assume they’re finished, until they trickle right back again wearing the same old face with a new foundation shade of confusion. Dreams pour truths and messages that you try to understand, but you can’t, so your shoulders sink beneath the heaviness. But you still carry it – and move forward, trying to understand why old things haunt an old soul who has already seen too many of them.

To this, we’re often consulted for advice. Particularly, in our friendships. Old soul make great friends because we’ve seen it all, even when we haven’t. Our friends turn to us, and we’re often all too happy to oblige.

Sometimes, however, we are used for that insight. One of my dearest friendships from childhood into young adulthood was with someone who constantly wanted my advice, particularly for relationships. I was happy to give the advice but was heartbroken time and again when she refused to follow it. Not because I thought I was right and it was some affront to my being, but because it hurts to see something you know will harm someoneunfold. You feel their pain almost as if it’s yours. Sometimes, it can feel like someone is using you for your truth, rather than your company. It makes it difficult to feel truly seen, as many others do.

Strength of Stories, Songs & Synchronicities

These things carry great for us. Sometimes the right number (a 222 or 888) carry support and confirmation; like an affirmation we aren’t alone. I’ve also had certain numbers – 777, specifically – pop up before important life lessons. A romantic lesson, in particular, was always heralded by a 777. Whenever I saw it, I ran into a person who played a transformative, if not tremulous, role in my life.

Certain songs have a spiritual depth to them, especially songs that tell meaningful stories. I believe this is part of the reason I always gravitated toward Country music: the storytelling. Folk, too, carries this depth – almost like everything is connected, even the most mismatched of things.

Small Song List of Poignant Stirrings

• The Highwomen, The Highwomen
• Hideaway. Brett Edlredge
• All I is See is You, Shane Smith & the Saints
• Oklahoma City, Shane Smith & the Saints
• Ever Mine, Luke Combs & Allison Krauss
• The Mountain, Shane Smith & the Saints
• Oklahoma City, Shane Smith & the Saints
• Stay, Allison Krauss
• Life Goes On, Luke Combs & Ed Sheeran
• Invisible String, Taylor Swift
• Beyond, Leon Bridges & Luke Combs
• Baby, Now That I’ve Found You, Allison Krauss
• Sunshine on my Shoulders, John Denver
• A Couple Minutes, Olivia Dean
• The 1, Taylor Swift
• The Night We Met, Lord Huron
• Calypso, John Denver
• Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old, Garth Brooks
• The Archer, Taylor Swift
• Tomorrow, Chris Young
• Honorable mention: Take Care by Drake and Rihanna (pop-y, but there’s a depth to it, I swear)

Strong, too, are certain plotlines in stories, or the manner of a storyteller. I sat at a tall just yesterday where the speaker spun such a tale, that I was riveted. He told a story of harrowing circumstances: death, disease and genocide. When I listened, the first thing I thought was: What an extraordinary life lived. The speaker’s story – while told in academic aims – carried this undercurrent of depth, spirituality: of being placed in a certain place, at a certain time.

The same carries into written stories. Specifically, “Throne of Glass” by Sarah J. Mass always struck a deep chord with me. Not because of Aelin or the fantasy (although I love those things), but because of the tapestry of spirituality beneath it all. All the Throne of Glass characters are woven into this brilliant web of supernatural meddling; of Gods, spirits, and beings guiding humans (and fae) through battles, relationships, and choices with reverence. All the characters are divinely interconnected in a way that transcends a normal narrative. There are ghosts, and legacies, and Gods. But there is also choice. There is something so meaningful in that series, in a way ACOTAR doesn’t come close to touching.

So, where does this leave us?

Old souls linger among us, carrying heavy weights in silent ways. We are just like you but move through the world with a different set of vision. Everything feels deeper, rings truer. We see the spiritual threads beneath the mundane that many miss. Not because we look for them, but because we understand they’re always there – waiting for us to feel them.

Inspiration for this piece: Old Soul, The High Women