Without getting all parallel universe-y on you, I will say that I believe that we each have multiple futures: the one we actually experience eventually, and the infinite number of possible futures that may come to exist if just one tiny thing were to change. That’s why I don’t take fortune telling very seriously. How can you possibly look at that complicated tapestry of potential and pull out the one thread that is actually going to come to pass?
And at some point or another we have all seen futures that have been a near miss, for better or for worse. You have meaningful eye contact with a stranger and you can see that happily ever after, the cute children and the white picket fence, until such time as he exits the train at a different stop than you do, never to be seen again. Or you turn back to answer your ringing phone just in time to miss being clocked on the head by your upstairs neighbor’s terracotta strawberry pot. Or your taxi gets stuck in a traffic jam, so you miss that flight that disappears over the Bermuda Triangle. You get the picture.
Tonight I saw a future that I’m very grateful did not come to pass. I was driving to work and I turned right onto an unlit street and instantly had to slam on the brakes because this IDIOT had parked on the roadway less than 15 yards from the corner. (Which is exactly why no one in their RIGHT MIND parks on the street less than 15 yards from a corner, by the way.) I missed crashing into him by mere inches, and when I say “him” I’m referring to that selfsame IDIOT, who happened to be sitting there on his trunk, in the dark, with his legs hanging down over the very bumper that I would have hit if my reflexes had been about a half a second slower.
Instantly I envisioned the gore and the screams and the hospitalizations and the lawsuits and the crushing lifelong guilt…and then I was thrust back into the present when the guy hopped off his car and started yelling at me as if it were my fault that his mother produced a child with absolutely no brains in his head. And then I’m thinking…”Well, maybe a little double amputation would build character.” Who knows?
The point is it didn’t happen. But I got to glimpse a very grim future, and it makes me grateful for the timeline I happen to be in at the present moment. But it also makes me wonder about those other extra-double-good timelines that I am missing out on. Like the one where I find the winning powerball lottery ticket stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Or the one where I eat the exact perfect combination of non-genetically modified foods to kick my metabolism into overdrive and have the same whippet-thin body my sister has. Or the one where I finally have success in conveying to my dogs that peeing on the landlady’s carpet is not a good idea.
And that line of thinking makes me realize just how little control we have over our future, and how, when you get down to specifics, we are really just along for the ride.
May your ride be a good one.
(Image credit: popartuk.com)
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