Maybe In Another Life: the road taken

What do we think about parallel universes? That perhaps in another life, maybe we make different decisions but arrive at the same endpoint of enjoying the journey and the people who accompany us. When I listened to Maybe In Another Life falling asleep, I was thinking about the choices that I’ve already made in my life, and the large and small ones that I’m still actively making. And how things may branch off and diverge, but regardless of which decision I make, in retrospect, everything will look so easy, and any decision I make will be the right decision. I’m still at this diverging point where some of the biggest decisions in my life have yet to been made — but at some point, it will just be watching the convergences looking back. It’s mind-blowing to think that there can be parallel universes for each large and small thing you do, and that within infinities, there are more infinities, and some infinities are exponentially, or incomprehensibly bigger (with infinity as the exponent). And yet, we live with the choices we have, and the life we have right now.

I have to think that there is a method to all of this madness, that there is a larger plan out there. Everything happens for a reason, isn’t that what they say? … I suppose it would follow that when you and I come to a place we can’t get past, then we aren’t meant to be, right? Then we aren’t right for each other. I mean, I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason for anything, then that’s too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I have ever made, every decision I will ever have to make. If our fate is determined with every step we take, it’s too exhausting. I prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.

This book (another Taylor Jenkins Reid) is written very intensely, where our protagonist Hannah lives two parallel lives, as the story diverges when she makes the singular decision to move back to the city she grew up in, Los Angeles. When she reunites with her high school lover, Ethan in LA, and potentially the love of her life, this singular decision whether to go home with him after her first night out back in LA spirals out into a multitude of different cascading outcomes, in which crazy things happen in each one. And as shit comes crashing down in both parallel universes, as she makes the most out of it and falls more in love with her person than ever (notably, a different person in each universe), but her values and principles and her most endearing friendship with Gabby stays constant, and grounds her through all of the chaos. In each universe, she would ask for nothing else, when she arrives at a time point 3 years later past her move, or more. She loved how things played out as they did, as confusing and difficult and devastating and disheartening each life-altering event in each parallel universe was (we’re talking about unplanned pregnancies through extramarital affairs, divorces, and suffering hit-and-runs as a pedestrian being hospitalized with spinal cord injuries). But regardless, even if it all comes crashing down, there are things and people that Hannah loves in each one of her lives. The book is confusing in terms of how events were staggered and how the parallel lives were transitioned from each other, with some little memory aids or motifs unique to each storyline. But some elements were also recurring throughout both of her lives, and perhaps Hannah does truly have more than one soulmate. It’s comforting to know that there is no wrong decision in life, but also, that each decision you make is so precious, and bears weight, the consequences will permeate into every trivial or important aspect of your life. The purpose of life is to experience.

Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don’t matter, that I’ll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do.

And sometimes instead of dwelling on each decision and getting lost in the weeds, you already know what decision you were going to make, before even reading the fine print. So skip the step of that incessant stress and just go with the gut feeling, because you were going to choose that anyways.

Also this beautiful quote that I think was my favourite moment reading it.

“I was reading a book about the cosmos recently,” he says, and then he looks around and goes, “Hold on, trust me, this relates.” The crowd laughs again. “And I was reading about different theories about the universe. I was really taken with this one theory that states that everything that is possible happens. That means that when you flip a quarter, it doesn’t come down heads or tails. It comes up heads and tails. Every time you flip a coin and it comes up heads, you are merely in the universe where the coin came up heads. There is another version of you out there, created the second the quarter flipped, who saw it come up tails. This is happening every second of every day. The world is splitting further and further into an infinite number of parallel universes where everything that could happen is happening. This is completely plausible, by the way. It’s a legitimate interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s entirely possible that every time we make a decision, there is a version of us out there somewhere who made a different choice. An infinite number of versions of ourselves are living out the consequences of every single possibility in our lives. What I’m getting at here is that I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices that led me somewhere else, led me to someone else.” He looks at Gabby. “And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn’t end up with you.”