Parallel Universes

Sometimes I think that thought about parallel universes, that if there are infinite versions of reality, then there are infinite versions of me. If all the variations of life, all my choices and all those forced upon me, all the infinitesimally small changes in determinate conditions butterfly effecting through the narrative, were to play out in every possible branching path that could've been taken... What would be different?

I think about all the other Fins, out there in the multiverse, and about how well they're doing – are they happy? What are their lives like? Are they successful (by whatever metric that may be)? How many have died along the way? How many got this disease? How many were broken by it? Did some give up and jump from a rooftop? Did some recover? How many are doing better than this me? What does better mean to all those other “me”s? When does the term “me” become inaccurate to describe these other sentiences? (Hell, is it even accurate to describe this one?) And most of all, where am I in the confinuum?

Sometimes this thought crosses my mind amidst the worst of the trauma when it feels like a ball and chain and not a portal. The idea that I'm a Fin who's had some of the harshest of it, that the universal dice roll hasn't fallen in my favour.

Sure, there's Fin #38484-B who died in a fire at the age of 7 on Christmas Eve right before he got his Gameboy Advance, and then of course there's Fin #7917234-Q who was born with an inoperable dog-sized benign tumour attached to his ass (his poor mother) and now, at the age of 27, has grown fat and spends his days painting a face on Timmy the Tumour or whatever and conversing with it, his only friend, like Wilson from Cast Away, and it's not that bad, but I'm not like Fin #9-272 either, who is a wildly successful musician, with a harem of elf-like groupies salivating at his mere presence, and a personal masseuse. But like a roll-call list of cards of auditioning actors ordered by potential, I see my name near the bottom of the pile, an unfortunate Fin, a Fin below the 50% mean of Fins, and all those 90th percentile Fins are doing so much better, god damnit! I see my potential as one of the elite Fins, all the paths missed, and the current Fin feels so... lacklustre. Where's my harem of Liv Tylers? Where's my third studio album that wins a Grammy?

And then sometimes I take a leap into the world, something clicks, and it's like all the qualities that initially seemed to be detriments, the roads untravelled, the wounds inflicted by life, the months spent masturbating into a pile of tissues and playing World of Warcraft, somehow crystallise into my best qualities, and here I am, Fin #1 all of a sudden. The Finnest Fin. Made stronger and more beautiful by the universal shit hitting of the fan of fate I’ve had to endure, now misted in its amber glow like a heavenly spray tan, Cat Stevens singing “like the first deeeeeewfall on the first grass” in the background, appreciating life 10 times more because of all the time lost, and Fin #9-272 with his tour bus full of orgiastic love (don't shine a black light in there) and 90 minute setlist of what at first seemed like rapturous perfection is actually quite shallow compared to this Fin, who has been mettled by the worst into a shining flower, some kind of divine justice. That other Fin's songs can't touch the top because he hasn't touched the bottom, he finds himself Anhedonia ridden and emptied by the constant, greedy spoiling of life's fruits, and the 19 models who fight for his attention are all only interested in his jetset lifestyle, not the substance of his ailing soul. Also, he probably has chlamydia.

The reality is, this Fin is the only Fin I have, and it's a choice. I can choose what to do with that universal dice roll that lands on “you're fucked, man”, get up after getting knocked down for the nth time, and weather the storm to emerge, all trial by fire, the better for it. Amid all the injustice and bad luck, there's the great cosmic silver lining, like in the words of Gil Scott-Heron: “no matter how far wrong you've gone, you can always turn around”, that the worst of clusterfucks can become the fertile ground for a version of you far dreamier than you ever imagined, the redeeming wink in the code of a God who realised this whole being alive thing was way unfair.