Thursday Thirteen

1. Some weeks Thursday creeps up on me and here I am, with nothing to write. Then I have to do what I'm doing today - just fly off the cuff and hope something comes to me.

2. A book I listened to recently split a character in two and gave her two parallel lives. This was a nod to the theory of the multiverse. Listening to a book that utilizes this was a bit difficult, but not impossible. (The book was Maybe In Another Life, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, if you're interested.)

3. As I understand multiverse theory, and this may be incorrect, I am not looking it up, what happens is that with every decision you make, because there's a choice, the "you" in another multiverse makes a different choice. That splits into a new universe where that person continues on. 

4. While this seems like it may be possible, if you follow it through, that means every micro-nano-second of your life, you're splitting into pieces and creating new universes, because don't we make decisions practically every second?

5. Much of what we do is habit - but it's a still choice as to whether you wash your hair the same way, or not. So, theoretically every little second there would be a split, ad infinitum, on and on, because each one of those splits would go on to make decisions and create new universes, too, while you're still creating new universes.

6. As Sheldon said in The Big Bang Theory, in one of those universes I am probably a clown. As in the kind that dresses up in a suit with a big nose, not the snarky somewhat sarcastic person I actually am sometimes.

7. I have often wondered where my life would have gone had I made different choices along the way. What if I had not decided to go to the high school football game where I met my husband? Most likely he would have met someone else and he would be married to another woman.

8. And me? Maybe I would have gone on to become a college professor, or a lawyer, or maybe none of those things. Maybe I would have met some other man and married him. Maybe I'd be a bag woman living under a bridge. I have no way of knowing.

9. Isn't this what fiction is, sort of? We fall into a different world when we read fiction, a whole other universe, so to speak, even if the fiction is not fantasy or science fiction. It's still a fictional world with fictional characters. 

10. Or is the writer subconsciously channeling a life being led by some alternative person created by some decision made when he or she was five years old? Are we aware on some level that we're creating different worlds - or are we losing parts of ourselves in this process? Shouldn't there be a gain and a loss to even things out?

11. Fortunately for me, I am no quantum theorist, I just know about this because I read a lot and I've seen it come up in various things. They talked about it some in The Big Bang Theory, too. I wonder how many people know more science from watching that show. I know I do. I just hope it's good science.

12.  Maybe ghosts are actually other universes that somehow bisect with our own, some place where there's a thin veil and the worlds cross over. 

13. And then there's the concept of time. I doubt it would be the same in each universe, so in some universes maybe it would be pre-industrial times, and in others maybe it would simply be hunter-gather land. Some would have to be in the future, wouldn't they? Or not. I don't know.

Weird things to think about. I should read a book about it sometime when I have time.

______________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 856th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.