Where We Was Before We Was?

An old friend of mine was telling this Polish gentleman, for whom English was a second language, about his new bride. At one point the Polish gentleman asked my friend, "Who she was before she was?" After some discussion, my friend determined that the Polish gentleman was asking him what his wife's maiden name was.  It occurred to me that this was a good way to refer to an interesting question that Uncle Ken has brought up:  Where were our souls before we were born into our earthly existence?

I don't think the Bible has a lot to say about it.  In the Genesis creation story, God made man out of mud from the river bank, and then breathed life into him.  The ancient Greek word for "spirit" is the same word for "wind" or "breath", which would seem to indicate that Adam's soul first came into existence when God breathed it in to him.  Furthermore, it is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes that, when we die, our bodies return to the dust from whence they came, and our souls return to God from when they came.  This would seem to be consistent with the Hindu and Buddhist belief that, once a soul has been purified by the experience of multiple incarnations, it is reabsorbed into the soul of God and loses its individual identity.  On the other hand, the Mormons believe in something called "the pre-existence".  The soul goes through several stages of development, of which the earthly life is only one, and not the first one either.  We are sent here to learn things that can't be learned anywhere else, and then we go back and learn some different stuff.  When we have learned enough stuff, we become gods ourselves, each one of us with our very own planet to rule over.  We can't have Earth, however, that one has already been assigned to Jesus.

What do I personally believe about it?  I don't know anymore.  The possibility has occurred to me that the whole idea of a soul existing separate from a physical body might be nothing more than wishful thinking.  Ancient people noticed that there is a difference between a living body and a dead body, and it has something to do with breathing.  When a person ceased to breath, they figured that his soul or spirit had left his body and must have gone somewhere else.  People have been speculating about that ever since.  Many people claim to have found the answer but, truth be known, they are still just speculating.

Well, we can stop speculating about Trump's impeachment, it's finally official.  Now all we've got to speculate about is the Senate trial and, after that, the next election.