The Thing About Multiverses

I recently read ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig (apologies if you know me on social media; I’m telling anyone who will listen, and even some who won’t). Beautiful writing aside, the story, the concept of the story, swept me up in the way only a few exceptional books can.

The book set off a chain-reaction of thoughts about how fragile and unpredictable our life trajectories really are. As a proper, grown-up adult I’m now able to look back and see the profound impact my father’s death had on my life, in a way I couldn’t fathom at thirteen years old. I lost him suddenly, having kissed him goodnight only for him not to be there the next morning. I was understandably devastated and even more understandably, unequipped to navigate the ways in which my life would change. At thirteen I was barely able to manage my newly minted teenage concerns and the weight of a very adult world crashed down around me.

I survived the impact mostly by ignoring it and pretending that life went on exactly as it had been, with just one person missing. I wanted a pair of Levi 501 jeans that I could bleach in the tub. I wanted to make the top choir in the upcoming auditions for the next school year. I wanted to write for the school paper and go to football games on Friday night. My acceptance by the cool, popular crowd was new and tenuous and I wanted desperately for them to like me.

The cool, popular crowd wasn’t keen on anyone who was different to what they were. As a result of this change in my life trajectory I was suddenly vastly different, within the same universe. Some kids had divorced parents but almost none had dead parents. I became unrecognizable to myself, most importantly, and because of this I went off the rails for the rest of my teenage years. I skipped school (and church), dropped out (of both) and took the long, winding, hard way around to adulthood.

I am this version of me because of the universe I chose (or chosen for me). Somewhere, there’s another version of me who went to college right after high school, became a psychiatrist (I was heavily influenced by I’m Okay, You’re Okay and Sybil when I was a teenager), and lived some kind of life I never even bothered to imagine after that.

I’m not special. Sliding Doors scenarios play out for everyone in one way or another. We catch the train at the last minute and come home to find our significant other in bed with someone less significant. Or we miss the train and arrive home later, none the wiser. The relationship inevitably crumbles, but as part of a different timeline. Side note: if you’ve never seen Sliding Doors and you’re into this kind of thing, it’s one of my favorites.

I also believe there’s more to parallel universes than versions of ourselves because we made different choices. How else is it possible for our souls, or whatever you want to call it, to reincarnate into another ride on the tilt-o-whirl, yet are still able to connect with the earthly living in the universe we shared?

My sister recently had a reading with her medium in which my mother and her sister showed up to tell her how much fun it is for them, being together again (they died 30 years apart). Just this past week, a friend’s hallway light, which was off at the switch, began to flash morse-code style for almost ten minutes on the same day she’d connected with her recently deceased husband on a shamanic journey. Another friend who works at a notably haunted hotel attests that empty rooms phone the front desk on a regular basis. I’m a firm believer in the ability of electrical currents to help transmission from one universe to another. String theory speaks to the web of connectedness that joins everything in the universe and beyond. We didn’t create the metaphysical superhighway; we only paved it and marked the exits. Maybe. I don’t really know.

The concept of reincarnation might seem to be at odds with after-death contact, but I suspect they are more intricately connected than we realize. What if, hear me out, some of our particles stay behind for the sole purpose of guiding our preferred people onto our same universe when it’s time for them to change lanes so we don’t lose them? This would explain how quickly we become attached to certain people, despite having just met them. Sometimes, we travel in caravans.

My mother was a devote Catholic who believed what the Church taught her about heaven. Namely, if you aren’t Catholic, you’re not getting in, no matter what. My father was Anglican but converted to Catholicism shortly after they married (and right before shipping off to Japan in December of 1942). He changed religious lanes, which I’m sure was a great relief to my mother, so he’d be able to join her in the afterlife. I may not believe in the Catholic concept of heaven, but they did so I believe it exists for them. They were already experienced lane-changers, having married only a few weeks after they met. My mother even broke off a long-term engagement to do so. I wonder how that guy fared when his timeline shifted, thanks to my parents.

My dad didn’t appear to be around when my mother and aunt visited my sister through the medium, so I wonder what’s up with that. It’s possible he was with his friends on the golf course or fishing. That would be his version of heaven, I’m sure.

Many brilliant and educated scientists have weighed in with their expert opinions on the science of multiverses. Metaphysicians and philosophers who are far more intelligent than me have pondered and expressed their views as to what it all means. Brian Greene has authored several books that combine both schools of thought beautifully. I don’t profess to know how any of this works. What I do know is that right now I’m in one lane on one highway, but I’ve been on several in just this lifetime. Not only are there infinite lanes, but there are also infinite highways, and they all lead everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

If my father had lived to be a ripe old age, it’s highly likely that my life would have followed a more predictable path. College after high school. Financial security through employment and marriage. Regular attendance at Sunday Mass (it takes no effort for a spiritual agnostic to go through the motions). Had my belief in everything not been challenged the way it was on that November night in 1974, I would have grown into quite a different version of myself. Neither better, nor worse. Simply different.

I wouldn’t be who I am now, but I would still be me. That’s how it works.

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