Edited by: Malavika Kishore
Sometimes, I like to view my life like I am not the one living it. Who knows? Maybe, I am not. Maybe, I am a character in a book, a puppet in a show. Perhaps, I am dangling at the fingertips of someone twirling their pen over inked pages, trying to decide my ending. At times like these, the idea of the lack of free will is almost a relief. A break from the chaos of stressing over every choice, every decision. Trying to decide the ones that matter, the ones that don’t. There is a theory in science called the butterfly effect. It says that a butterfly flapping its wings in one corner of the world, can cause typhoons. A movement so small can lead to calamities of preposterous sizes. A choice so small can change lives.
Sometimes, I like to delve into these musings. These thoughts about a parallel Universe and what choice prevented its creation. For example, if they had never installed a basketball hoop in our society’s badminton court (It was a part-basketball, part-badminton court) , I would have never met my best friends. It goes way back, though. At the society meeting, if the person who had voted in favor of the basketball hoop installation, the one who upvoted the equal vote, what if he had said no? What if he had had a bad day at the office? An angry boss? Would he have gone to the meeting frustrated, and voted no? Would the basketball court never exist in that Universe? A group of bored kids would have never come together because some boss yelled at an employee. It’s almost amusing.
It makes life seem like an amalgamation of even your smallest choices, a symphony of the decisions you regret making, and the decisions you wish to revisit. If I hadn’t completed my homework that day, my mom wouldn’t have let me go down to play. There are about infinite scenarios where I would have never met my best friends; an infinite number of Universes where each version of myself lives with the choices I made. A version of me might have actually written that best-seller I always wanted to write. One must have never ended up in Ashoka. I wonder where they went, where the butterfly effect carried them. I wonder if they like the choices they made. Do they wish they would have made it to where I am? Are they happy with their choices?
Am I?
I go back, and I search my life. I search and search, and I don’t know what choice made me end up here. In front of this laptop, in the RH2 lounge, writing this. I haven’t found an answer yet. Do I need to start from the scratch of everything to find that choice? Do I need to rewrite the story of the whole goddamn Universe to reach that conclusion? At what points did my life diverge in yellow woods? Did I travel the road less traveled by? Did that make all the difference? (Some use of that Robert Frost poem in 9th grade.)
This World is a cacophony of the worst and the best outcomes. I sit and cry and laugh because I always feel like I am in the middle of all Universes. The center of all choices. My life could be so much worse, and it could be so much better. I am happy, and I am sad. We are so acquainted with these flickering emotions, this idea of ups and downs running after one another, with no end, with no winner. Is there a Universe where there is a winner? I don’t know which theory to believe, or if this parallel Universe is the best to be in. It certainly couldn’t be, because there is so much that could be better. But, maybe, better is not a standalone gift of the Universe. A choice that could have made one aspect of my life better, which would turn the wheels of the Universe would move another wheel too. Maybe, better comes with worse.
I work with zebrafishes in the biology lab. We carry them from one tank to the other, and they swim in bliss, or distress (if that’s what we are trying to induce). But do they know they are participant n in a science experiment? Most likely don’t have that level of self awareness. But we do. Yet, maybe we are just lower level organisms, participants in an experiment that we were never told about. Go to school. Go to college. Get a job. Get married. And once you check all the tasks, they take you out of the tank.
I think people come up with these theories, or at least I do, to find alternatives to the idea that the World is ours to decide. The Universe is mine to manipulate and choose. I can look at it the way I want, and every choice I make will affect my life in profound ways. That is a terrifying thought. If I decide to stop writing this article right now, and I get up and go to my room and do something else, maybe my life would turn out completely differently than it will. If I had never gone down that day, my Universe would crumble, and a new one would stand in its place.
Or, maybe it won’t. Maybe, I am just typing these things right now, because the puppeteer moves its strings and me, the puppet, laughs and ignores the invisible strings on my fingers that extend to the ends of the World.