Parallel lives can intersect
Not to bore you with the specifics, I recently met a guy from my hometown of Regina. Neither of us had any recollection of meeting before.
As we talked, the parallel experiences we shared kept piling one on top of the other. The thought of parallel universes crossed my mind immediately.
We had so many experiences in common I began to think this was my doppelgänger — only this other self had made different choices making his journey parallel to mine but totally different in so many ways.
I wondered if the entire episode was too weird to be real. Was this some delusional episode?
[Click on image to enlarge.]
It had that eerie feeling of seeing someone with your peripheral vision and knowing that person was you but then logic takes over and you know it couldn’t be what you thought it was. In fact, rather than feeling a sense of fear, I think I felt a sense of calm completion.
Not only did we grow up in the same city, we grew up knowing many of the same people, we lived in neighbourhoods divided by the famous Victoria Avenue. Yet his experiences growing up in Regina were totally opposite to my experiences. Where I thought I was the only different person in Regina, my friend regaled me with the thriving and very active community of which I was totally unaware.
He moved to Vancouver at about the same time I did. We knew the same people here in Vancouver and recounted events that we both had attended, charities we both had supported. Yet neither of us remembered even bumping into each other. Remember, this parallel universe existed over 25 years and the chances of at least knowing “of” each other was more likely than not.
The crowning moment came during a serious moment when I think I was contemplating how children of my age grew up with un-involved parents — parents who didn’t attend our school events, sports or chaperoned at school dances. Somehow, I segued into an anecdote about one particular art teacher who delighted in destroying rather than encouraging creativity.
I mentioned the teacher’s name and my friend stopped and calmly said, “He spit on my Christmas bell.”
When we finally caught our breath from laughing so hard, it was if the sky had become more vibrant, the air more fragrant, the world a bit calmer.
The undeniable rule that parallel lines never intersect had dissolved in that moment. Past experiences became irrelevant no matter how similar they were.
I know I internalized the truth of the cliche of “living in the moment and moving forward.” For that simple realization, I am ever grateful to my new-found doppelgänger friend. I left him in the moment without expectations of any kind.
What it leaves me is a future of endless possibilities. What a gift I was given by just bending the rules of geometry for one split second in my lilfe.
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