Your Many Worlds
Can you visit the other versions of you that might have been?
The moments that change our whole world are quiet ones - when we realize that we’ve fallen in love, when we first think about leaving a job, when a mysterious mutated virus first infects a human, or when one person initiates a process that will eventually start a war. By the time the ripples of change reach the surface of our lives, we are already eons beyond that first moment. By the time the first symptoms show up, we are already carrying an entire ecosystem. Even if we had the most sophisticated machinery, even if we could bend time and space, and manipulate the universe to reveal the moment we could have changed it all, it would be lost in a sea of other, rather mundane moments. We, actually, would likely not even be able to find the moment of inflection - when the energy first began to build behind a choice we would eventually make. We might remember a moment, when sitting with an early morning coffee, where we thought it’s time. We might recall an errant ache we had months ago, and chastise ourselves for not getting it checked out. We might reflect upon decisions we made - but the actual moment where a new truth emerged - likely wafted by as a quiet summer breeze.
The greatest cultural contributions all began as a dream, a thought, a random musing. The Harry Potter series emerged from an English teacher’s daydream on a train jotted down on a napkin. The moment humans discovered fire happened, likely by accident, with nothing more than some sticks and the heat of the sun. The moment the airplane was invented happened in quiet, with some papyrus and a quill. The moment of Bnei Israel’s freedom from Egypt, led out in a great exodus by Moshe Rabbeinu was set in motion by a quiet reflection made generations before him by a chosen man named Avram - and a glimmer of hope in the face of great promises. On the other side of all of these lies the book never written, the papyrus crumpled up and thrown out, and the fear of not being good enough to lead.
Last week, a friend of mine gave me this wish - may the you that exists in an alternate timeline be using her time to sleep and rest, and may that somehow translate to the you that exists in this timeline today.
You might be thinking that this is somewhat of an odd thing to say to someone, but at that moment, I found it to be a profound reflection on how in any given moment, there exists another choice - another reality. For me, it was perfect - rather than being faced with the incredulous question I keep getting of, how are you even out right now? This friend honored the choice I was making to show up, and instead offered me the energy from the me that might still be home in her pajamas. In the moments where we show up, there also exists a version of us who decided to stay home. There’s the you that got to celebrate, and the you that missed the party. There is a you that wakes up a half our earlier to exercise, and the you that doesn’t. There is a J.K. Rowling who accepted the 11th rejection letter for Harry Potter, and a world in which the story never came to be. There exists a world where we didn’t have a pandemic, where the Twin Towers still stand, and where millions of people are still alive today. There is a world in which you made the other choice, and your life is on a completely different, yet parallel track.
This is not a new theory - in 1935, we were introduced to the thought experiment of “Schrödinger’s Cat,” wherein a hypothetical cat in a box may be considered simultaneously alive and not alive based on a random radioactive event that may or may not occur. The only way that one would know the fate of the cat is by looking in the box. If that doesn’t happen, then the cat exists in both a suspended state of life and un-life. There is an offshoot of this experiment called “The Many Worlds Theory,” which says that the cat exists both on a plane where it is alive, and on one where it is not alive - and that they both exist independently of one another in alternate realities. The random radioactive event in the box is the inflection point in the cat’s life, the moment at which the curve of its existence turns in an un-alterable direction. Both cats exist, but they cannot interact with each other directly. There is one life where the cat lives, and one life where the cat does not.
The idea that we simultaneously exist on different planes has often tickled my mind. I think about the various inflection points - both the quiet ones where a realization took root, and the explicit ones - where life careened in a direction that I could not undo. I have a few- but the one that I usually come to is quite literally a time when I turned left instead of right. Quite literally - turning left meant attending a support group, and turning right meant another night in solitary turmoil. The path on the left was not a straight line to the present. Much the opposite, it actually was a plunge into unexplored depths that needed cleaning out - and a gradual, decades-long resurfacing. Sometimes, we’re still bobbing up and down towards the surface.
As we all know, success/recovery/ growth looks more like “Jeremy Bearimy” than straight, upwards diagonal:
The Jeremy Bearimy theory from the show, The Good Place, suggests that while life on Earth seems to take a linear path, time/space actually loops in on itself continuously - and is played out in a variety of versions in the afterlife. It hints at the fact that any decision point can create an alternate life, filled with its own set of decisions and inflection points. What I love about this particular theory, is that the decisions can, and often do influence each other on the timeline in which you, the reader, is awake right now. There may be a version of you that has already achieved the dream that has just begin to exist in your mind.
Think about a time in your life where you made a decision that completely altered your journey. Perhaps, this was something beyond your control - something that happened to you that you were forced to react to. Perhaps, you are in an inflection moment right now - making decisions that will demarcate a clear “before” and “after”. There is the version of you that doesn’t change, and the version of you that will continue forward on this new path. Each one being a legitimate possibility for where your life could go.
I started asking friends, what is alternate timeline you doing right now? - For some, this took some mental gymnastics to even wrap themselves around the idea. For others, they already had a full narrative ready, as if they often thought about - who would I be if I had taken the other road? made the other choice? said yes instead of no? been relentless instead of backing down? Some of my favorites include someone living a child-free life filled with theater and travel; someone joining the army despite their parents’ objections; someone trying their hand at acting; someone opening a restaurant; and someone who took a chance on the not-so-sure, but certainly more interesting path of being an artist. Many reflections angled towards the lighthearted, and many more reflected upon people they’ve lost, opportunities they felt they had squandered, and words they wished they hadn’t said. Then, I asked them to think about the fact that, perhaps, those alternate versions do exist right now and that the energy from that life does feed into the energy of this one. For many, that was too much of a backbend.
When we peel back the layers of our lives, there are many moments in which the “alternate you” can be doing something that feeds into the “right now you”. There’s the you healed and the you that never got the help she needed. There’s the you that stayed in your hometown, and the you that moved across the world. There’s the you that didn’t leave the abusive relationship, and the you that survived. There’s the you that learned to set boundaries, and the you that still tries to please everyone. There’s the you that understood you couldn’t save everyone, and the you that is still blaming herself for not being able to. There’s the you that found faith, and the you that is still searching. There’s the you that gave up when it was hard, and the you that cried - but kept on going. There’s the you that caught the train, and the you that missed it. There’s the you that ignored the pain, and the you that tended to it. In each one of these situations, there is a you living another life - and neither can exist in the same plane.
As I walked home from synagogue this morning, I wondered what alternate me was doing at that time. In this timeline, a sticky attempt at wind failed to lower the heat doming around me walking with the baby. I tried to close my eyes, and imagine what that other reality could be, but all I felt was a strange dimming of my senses. It got suddenly very quiet - the molecules of air around me buzzed in anger at my attempt to leave this timeline and peek a glimpse at another. When I refocused, my two older kids were nowhere to be found - and my heart dropped as a variety of possibilities began to tentacle out of my brain. In an uncharacteristic moment of panic, I yelled out for my oldest - unable to see her in either direction: where we came from, and where we were going. They weren’t at the next stop sign, they weren’t up the street, and in my mind - they were in a million terrible places. I yelled louder - and then, I felt my whole body weep in relief when I heard them yell back, “WHAT? We’re over HERE!”
They had just scooted a tiny bit further ahead, beyond the curb where I could see them. They were fine, they were waiting at the crosswalk a bit further up - and yet - for a split second, they were not, and an entirely different reality took shape. As we made our way home, I was pretty glad to be in this one.
What is alternate timeline you doing right now?