The Toilet Roll Archives (15): Cat in the Box.
Hey hey! Sorry I haven’t uploaded. Life has been slightly busy since The Outside officially reopened. Ps: wear a mask, esp if you used to carry a JD sports bag for PE *** see previous post!
Lockdown is beginning to slowly lift (whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate) but I'm still considering this post as a part of the TRA since it stems from a time in which we were sat stewing inside. I remember watching this doc with my flatmates early on in Lockdown (throwback to one hour of exercise a day) about metaphysics and the whole idea of measuring probability and potential. Heard of the ‘cat in the box’ theory? Basically that. And it’s been plaguing me for a while.
I don’t know if I believe in multiple universes. I think I might, but, then again, I don’t necessarily do. I think few of us can truly stand there and fully invest their faith in the idea that the world splits off into a series of alternate realities every time we make a decision – one in which we choose one course of action and one in which we opt for another.
I don’t necessarily think there an immeasurable number of alternate Kerry’s running around in alternate realities, living out the choices I didn’t make. Then again, who am I to say that there isn’t? I guess the point is that there is potential for it.
In the most tangible and realistic of senses, I don’t think that alternate universes exist. Not in the physical. But, in a mental capacity, I’m certain they exist. There is a direct correlation between our choices and our mental framework, our minds.
Regardless of what we believe – religion and culture aside –
we can all agree that there are pivotal moments throughout our lives in which
we have to make decisions. There are specific times where the paths we’re on –
whether you believe they are orchestrated or guided or built on our own
experiences – fracture into two. They become Path A and Path B; they divide our
lives into something of ‘Before’ and ‘After’ moments.
The times we accept one job offer over another. The moment we choose to spend or not spend our lives with certain people. Tragic and traumatic events which completely alter our outlooks (this is a funny one because they aren’t always underpinned by choices per say, but you get my vibe).
There are times when paths unhinge themselves as seamlessly as a train on some tracks, moving into a completely different direction – and it’s all down to a simple “yes” or “no.” Because of one decision, we allow ourselves to head somewhere new. And, if you’re anything like me, you might wonder where the other tracks would have taken us.
I’m not saying I look back at decisions I’ve made with an overwhelming sense of regret or a wistful “what-might-have-been” longing. Why worry over things we can’t change? All sorts of factors affect choices we make. You can’t blame yourself in the moment. Shit happens; we move. Simple.
But I often wonder who I might have become if I had made different choices. Again, not in a way that’s underpinned by regret or sadness. Just a wonder-y, whimsical, dreamy kind of way. Idk. Maybe it comes with more life experience and age and stuff. God, I sound like one of those middle-aged self-help writers (which I find quite an overwhelmingly ironic genre in itself anyway but, hey, that’s a different blog post altogether!)
I look back at the child I was. Ten year old Kerry grew up bursting with ideas about the future. I had a different answer to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” each time I was asked. I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted open roads and a lifetime on the run. I wanted to move to a place where I knew no one and no one knew me. I wanted to blend in with the crowds of a city and wear a suit and heels and boss everyone out of my way. I wanted to live on farmland in the middle of nowhere with only pigs for company. I wanted to live by the water and spend my days sailing and my nights writing. I wanted absolutely everything; different paths for different versions of who I wanted to be.
And here I am, at 22, beginning to lay down the bricks of these paths and it’s all starting to feel a bit real. And it’s fucking terrifying but, at the same time, the adrenaline rush brought around by ‘promise’ and ‘potential’ is something I’m trying to fully embrace. Pebbles in the road aside, I’m building myself a version of a universe that isn’t by any means a bad one. Is it the one I dreamed of? Sure – to an extent. I’m crossing some stuff off that list I think ten-year-old Kerry would be proud of and I’m doing things ten-year-old Kerry would never have even dreamed of. But sacrifices and circumstances and responsibilities and all that stuff isn’t something ten-year-old Kerry really thought about. Why would she?
But I still do wonder about the other ones – universes, I mean. Alternate lives. I think that most of us do. It’s only human, isn’t it? To wonder and stuff.
Somewhere out there, there’s a world in which I didn’t move away and stayed in Leigh. In that world, I’m probably far more financially stable from living with my parents for longer and maybe a little less responsible and boring. I probably never developed a cold caffeine addiction (I hate u Lily and Twitter) and the family dog would love me a whole lot more than he loves my brother.
There’s a world in which I’ve finished that novel I have saved on my documents somewhere on this laptop. I don’t know if it’s a bestseller. It doesn’t matter, really. Alternate Kerry is a published author and she’s a name in print and all her hard work and sleepless nights and weirdly scattered mindmaps and sticky notes have manifested themselves in actual ink.
In another universe, I don’t use my independence as an ego defence. I’m a whole lot more free. I don’t measure my identity in accomplishments, victories and hard work. I measure it in how many tattoos I have, how many mountains I’ve climbed, and how many places I’ve passed through and left behind. But at the same time, somehow, I think I’m miserable here. A bit empty inside. I don’t know why. Not all of our alternate universes grow us, I guess.
There are an infinite number of worlds that I’m capable of imagining for myself at absolutely any point in time. A whole lot of “what-could-have-been’s” and shit like that. And it’s not a bad thing to think about; it’s only human to wonder and to dream, to think about potential and possibility. As long as it isn’t underpinned by regret, why not wonder, you know?
But I have to remind myself that I don’t live in those universes. No one does.
We live through our ‘Before’ and ‘After’ moments, accept them for exactly what they are, and keep going. Picking up and carrying on. As beautiful and as fun as ‘wondering’ can be, it is also dangerously close to ‘dwelling,’ and that’s territory I never want to find myself in.
I often joke about My Poor Life Choices but, in all seriousness, everyone makes them and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We collect our senseless mistakes in our hands and we clutch them close, knowing they’re now ours and ours alone to carry. We don’t get to hand them over to some alternate version of ourselves, in some alternate universe, and ask them to lighten our load. Kerry in Universe X, Universe Y or Universe Z isn’t going to help me. Alternate-me has her own shit to deal with; stuff we know nothing about, and never will.
Maybe the version of myself who stayed in Leigh was too scared to leave. Maybe novelist me never sold a single copy of her book. Perhaps the freer and floatier version of Kerry bought the wrong pill from the wrong local dealer once and ended up in a wretched overseas prison for a decade or two of her life.
Ok – v dramatic, Kezza, pause that one. But you can see how easy it is to dwell. We need to let ourselves breathe, accept, pick up and move on.
Maybe if we could see – properly see – how each of our alternate lives would play out, we’d scramble to hold onto the ones that we have. If we could see all these timelines play out at once, maybe we’d continue on in the universe we currently find ourselves in. Because if there is one thing we still have in this life that we do not have in any of those other ones, it is choice.
We still get to face every decision that led our alternate-selves down a different path and pick the other option. We can always choose Path A over Path B. We possess absolutely none of the constraints or limitations that shackle our hypothetical alternate others. And that has to count for something, right?
I think of it like this – for every achievement alternate you succeeds in, you’d be giving up something in this universe. For every mistake you came across here, there’s a mistake you dodged there. For all that you know, maybe you ended up the absolute best possible version of yourself. Maybe you chose the best of all possible roads. 'Probability,' innit. Fun game.
And maybe the ideas we still harbour about who we wish we’d become in other universes just serve to point us towards where we should look to go right here. Because, if we're talking big picture, the future is nothing but a series of alternate universes that we still have the power to choose from. Its potential is endless. There are still infinite versions of ourselves that we can choose to become.
Wow, where did that one come from????!!!??? It's 9pm on a Wednesday. I need a life :)
Love and all that. Hope you're doing well xoxo
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