My day would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the red stain on the front of my white long-sleeve that I had gotten when ketchup splashed out of a bowl and onto my shirt.
Yes, I probably shouldn’t have worn a white shirt to dinner. But that’s beyond what I could do right now.
But let’s assume that I had never splashed ketchup onto my shirt. That I had chose to wear something else that day (maybe a red 49ers jersey?). That I had just not gone to dinner, period.
Could I have changed any of that? No. But do I wish I could have changed that? Yes.
If you believe in the notion of parallel universes, you’ll agree with the concept that at every instance in which someone makes a decision, the universe splits off: one in which you made the choice that you made, and however many universes in which you could have made one of multiple other choices. And if you think about it, there exist many, many parallel universes to the one you’re living in right now.
Is the universe that you’re living in the one you wish to live in? If there were decisions that I could have made that would have prevented me from having a red stain on my shirt after dinner, absolutely!
But what if those decisions that affect you the deepest aren’t made by yourself? How do you reconcile with the multiple universes created for you — by an entity with an intentionality that conflict with your personal framework?
Six months ago to this day, I reflected on the dangers of idealizing the people in my life — particularly the events that transpire when one paints too perfect of a picture of a confluence. No matter how ideal, how delicate we unleash our stories and our emotions onto the canvas, no painting is ever ideal. I like to think of time as the great equalizer: some paintings might resist the effects of weathering for years. Others might turn into a smudge of paint flakes within moments. The core principle still stands: no painting has ever withstood the test of time perfectly, and no relationship ever will: some will propagate to a stalemate. Others end before they even begin. And six months ago was when I chose to put down my paintbrush: to stop idealizing the people in my life. To let the tiny red string tied between my finger and someone else’s go. To erase the art serving as a linkage between two canvases when it was time to do so. I’ve resisted the idea of picking up this paintbrush for the better part of the last six months, because I felt that I’d be more inclined to reaffirm my attachment to the people I idealized.
Today, I decided to pick up this paintbrush again. And as I dotted this canvas, a motif emerged: that of a palm tree.
Within a religious context, Palms are mentioned dozens of times — when the people of Jerusalem greeted Jesus a week before his death and resurrection — and today we recognize the occasion as Palm Sunday. In Judaism, Palms hold a special significance — they represent a sense of peace.
Six months ago to this day, I discovered that I didn’t need anybody else in my life to anchor with myself. For me to thrive and explore how my passions transform into impact with myself, and myself only, as the tour guide. For me to recognize that she may have moved on because she found this notion of a “whole” in someone else rather than myself. And I was okay, because this sense of whole within self is a harsh truth of life that I have discovered alone. Tonight, I was happy for her because I know that genuine happiness for those around us is a testament to one truly becoming whole with their self.
But at the same time, a dichotomy arose. Even if this was the new reality that I was facing six months later, was I truly happy for the situation that we found ourselves in? Did I act with the appropriate intentionality to avoid hurting each of us and to be able to help her, without sacrificing my own right to feel the way I do?
No, and Yes.
To say that one ceases to experience emotion when circumstances change is completely false. Us humans are creatures of emotion: we use emotion as a stimulus to allow us to respond to every single way the world tries to kill us. We respond to emotion in a variety of ways: some impulsive, others calculated. But whichever way an emotion arises, it’s never a good idea to run away from it. Confront it head on. Challenge it. Fight it with all of your might.
So how did I go about fighting this emotion?
A more appropriate question to ask, in this case, would be to reason from the other party’s point of view: “how did the decisions she made in her life create the universe that we both exist in at this point in time?”
We ended up in a universe in which I had no power to change our circumstances: there wouldn’t be a possible way out of this — to live the lives that I had envisioned by painting on the paintbrush. Instead, this time it was the universe painting for me. And unlike the ideal job that I thought I would have done in the past, the universe never does a perfect job. Splatters here, unevenly colored lines there, mismatched colors.
And quite surprisingly, the universe is surprisingly good at painting with mismatched color schemes. Six months later, we’ve both found ourselves in separate relationships — paintings that were created with incompatible color schemes. From the surface, it might seem fine: each imagines that the other checks off all of the boxes, and after a short period of talking, are ready to paint the next scene. Then comes the trough of disillusionment: a short honeymoon period is only the precursor to what comes next — being confronted with the harsh reality that the person you’ve ended up with is not the soulmate who promises to help you self-actualized. They might be selfish: focused on their own interests, ignorant of a larger passion or goal, and fails to add value to you. It’s only in this scenario that you start to feel bored: why bother spending time with a person exclusively, when you know that they aren’t going to help you grow? And if you get bored, what’s there to prevent future conflict?
When incompatible colors are mixed together, often the result isn’t very pretty.
Today, the decisions that I had no power to make in our universe have collided our paths again, and I had no choice to pick up the paintbrush. But this time, I was careful not to mismatch my colors. The green and brown combined crafted a palm tree — a sense of true peace. One that enables me to reconcile with my past, yet never be afraid when looking forward. One that enables me to reason not just with the past, but also with how future universes might play out.
I’m still not sure which universe we’d end up in. But I hope it’s one with a lot of palm trees.