There’s a popular theory I was in love with for the longest time- it suggested that the people around you may just be all the different possibilities of your lives, your selves, spread across time. This theory is centred around the belief that everything does begin and end with you, but also everything is, essentially, you. It offered me an unknown amount of peace every night when I found myself thinking about how I could’ve lived the previous day in the best way possible. I’d just tell myself, "but hey, if someone did have the best day of their life today, isn’t that so peaceful too? through them, i can pretend i lived."
Lately though, this has begun to change. I’m realizing it was quite self-centric of me to love such a thing. Not to say that self-centrism is bad, it really isn’t. It’s often necessary actually. But too much of it can be lonely. Exhausting. You end up alienating yourself from everyone because you think the world is an empty bowl that’s singing because of your reverberations caused due to constant movement. If I’m everything everywhere all at once (sneaky reference, no?), am I really just ‘me’ at all? It felt too suffocating to think of my self from this lens. Then, I started looking around.
It’s all so different. The people around you are so different, living such different lives, feeling such different things, having completely different battles. I was having a weird day recently, but then one compliment from a stranger completely tilted it. I thought- wow. Someone somewhere in the world must’ve had a good day. Unknowingly, they must’ve made someone else’s day as well. Maybe this created a ripple effect in the system which somehow, by pure randomness, reached me. Beautiful. Had the world just been different selves of me, I’d have found poetry in this moment too for sure. I’m not sure if I’d have liked to come back to it though. But here- a thought began to take shape. If we’re all so different, and thus by logic, not the same, then what exactly is going on? Why do I feel so settled by this realisation? I love the stardust theory too- all of us are made of stars. Dead or dying stars. Tragic, yet magic. Comfort.
When I look at the world as countless dead stars giving life one more shot so they can finally be close to each other, affecting each other’s lives every single second, I feel more at peace. It makes me feel so deeply connected to it all. Suddenly, the universe unravels itself in front of me and for the first time in a long while, I get it. I get what’s happening. I get what has changed. Me? Of course. I’m always changing, like I mentioned in my previous blog. You? You’re always changing too. These are obvious. The more subtle change that has taken place is the way I understand myself. It’s more profound, more impactful.
Now I like to think we're all made of dead stars that just couldn't let go of life. I like to think we're all attempts by the universe to love itself in the ways that it couldn't in other forms of matter.
We're all matter. We matter. You matter to me.
What I’ve been trying to say is simple. I hope you have a great day. I hope it reaches the world. I hope the world returns it to you ten-fold.
