Friday, May 13, 2011

The Only Rational Explanation

Recently, I have become sort of obsessed with the idea of multiple universes.  I read a crazy book and I watched Fringe all season, and those things sort of embedded this idea that there are more dimensions that the one we can see.  In the book I read (Anathem, if you are interested), the premises is that certain things filter between the barriers in the multi-verse.  In that case, it was geometry, but maybe it doesn't have to be.  Maybe there are things that are even more permeable than math. 

I started thinking that maybe that is where deja vu comes from.  When we have this overwhelming feeling that something has happened to us before, maybe it is because it HAS, but in a different universe.  When that thing happened in the other universe, there was something--some strong emotional attachment--that went with it.  And because of those emotions, the event filtered through the layers into our universe.  So, when you find yourself in the situation you have this emotional response, even though perhaps the "event" that happened over there doesn't happen here.  You get something that is like an emotional echo. 

(So, if you are still with me at this point that is amazing.  Even I am a little fuzzy about this.  And now it gets a little more insane.  Yes, I know that this is far and away the most crazy thing I have posted to date.) 

Recently, I was concerned about a friend, and Matt asked me "Yeah, but why do you care so much?"  And it occurred to me that I had no idea why I cared so much.  I haven't known this person very long at all.  But for some reason, I care. 

It has happened to all of us.  You meet someone and you feel like you have known them your whole life; you have a connection that you can't explain.  There is no weird getting-to-know you phase where silence is awkward.  You find yourself telling that person things you never tell anyone, and you don't think twice about it.  Why does that happen? 

Again, I think that it is the multi-verse.  Just like mathematical truths filtered through in Anathem, I think that our emotional connections to people filter through, if they are strong enough. 

In some other universe, that person that you just met who is suddenly your best friend really IS your best friend from childhood, or your sibling, or the love of your life.  The connection you have with that person over there so strong that it makes it all the way over here, and you feel its remnants across space, or time, or whatever it is that separates that universe from the one we are in now. 

So the next time you meet someone like that, think about how amazing it is that you found each other not just there, but here too, and maybe in countless other universes in between. And in each one, maybe you have a slightly different relationship, but all with strong enough emotions that you can feel them as soon as you meet that person. 

Of course, all of this could just be rambling thoughts I am having because Ben, Mason, and Reid broke my brain when they gave me all those sci-fi books.  Hmmm... well, I will get them for that in the next universe!   

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