I learned last week (from an episode of Flash Forward, so take this with a grain of salt) that a lot of physicists believe in a theory that says that there are multiple universes out there, and that the life that would have resulted from every path we never chose is actually still out there somewhere being lived by another version of ourselves. This idea, that every possible outcome of every possible decision I ever made is alive and well in another universe, has stuck with me and I keep turning it over in my brain, imagining decisions both large and small and thinking about what those realities would look like. Somewhere there’s a Lauren whose best friend didn’t move away in grade eight, a Lauren who is married to a red-haired guy named John, a Lauren who is still working at Manulife, a Lauren who actually buckled down years ago and wrote a book and lost 20 pounds and started getting up much earlier in the morning.
I wonder, are those Laurens happier than this one? Sadder? Taller, maybe? And more adept at flipping a grilled cheese sandwich without causing the bread to go all cattywompus on her? (One can hope.) I guess that is one of the truly good things about the way our lives our structured: we rarely, if ever, have to be faced with the reality of all of the possible consequences of the decisions we’ve made, what it would look like if we swore things would be different and then followed through on it. Life’s not like a Choose Your Own Adventure book – you can’t cheat like I always did, flip ahead and pick the best of the two options – and we just get to see the one reality, the one we’re living, but for all we know, it is the best one, the healthiest and happiest and most worthy, of the thousands that are out there.
I never cheated with the Choose Your Own Adventure Books, but I died a lot… so I stopped reading them.
See, that’s why I cheated. It eliminated the element of suspense, which was less fun, but I didn’t die, which was more fun.
As you know, Lauren, I think about this stuff all the time… how different paths could end up with different results. Everything from whether or not we decide to move away and change our jobs to… whether to come home via Merryhill or Hwy 7. Somehow it seems as though choosing one thing over the other could lead to a whole different life – the people we’d meet, the advantages we’d have and also the heartbreak that might find us. Since we don’t know the possible outcomes (that is, until I master the physics and figure it all out), sometimes it feels like we’re choosing blindly. And that bugs me a bit, so I sit here being indecisive when I NEED to decide. I like alternatives, keeping all doors open, but eventually I have to start shutting some doors so that I can actually DO something. Sigh. And you’re right, once I’ve chosen something and done it, I rarely look back at what might have been. And I think I’m pretty happy with the way things are.
ps. You should talk about physics more often. You are good at it!
Ha! Perhaps I should tackle a math-based post next. 🙂 Actually, this post was partially based on that conversation we had weeks ago about making big life-changing decisions, and then I watched that episode of Flash Forward and thought man, I’m glad we never really have to see the other life from that other choice all laid out like that.
Cattywompus? Quite possibly the best word I have read in awhile. Time to bring back word of the day.