How to live without regret
I believe in a multi-verse, that each decision creates a quantum split and the two or more possible choices each follow their own line of probability into a new universe. At times of immediate crisis, like skidding into a spin in a car, I can visualize the various possible outcomes splitting off, each taking their own path. I recently got the chance to ride in a race car on a race track with an experienced driver. Picturing all those possible accidents at every turn was not the right frame of mind for that experience. :-)
Watching Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Pluto Files Tuesday night made me briefly regret I had not pursued astronomy as a career. It is a field I have a natural affinity for, one I can often intuitively anticipate as I see possible theories emerging. For instance, when the Kuiper Belt was discovered, I was convinced that Pluto would be found to be just one of many such icy bodies in the Belt. I was right. I also predicted the BioCentric theory in college, but that is fodder for another entry.
This morning I found the quantum split that would have taken me that direction. I think it's a big one. I think the me that did not have sex at a very young age (14) the one who remained socially awkward and isolated through high school, is the me that pursued astronomy. Not that I wasn't socially awkward in high school. There is no quantum universe I can imagine in which I was a jock or a cheerleader. But without sex, I would have been much more inwardly focused, and perhaps more driven to conquer math. At the University of Chicago, the joke in my dorm was that sex was just the sublimation of the drive to do math. :-)
I am mostly happy with the path my life has taken, and would not change it if I could. Except maybe to dump my ex a couple years sooner. But I find it comforting that somewhere, there is a universe where I pursued astronomy, where I became a radical activist, where I didn't marry so young at all and went on to other adventures. I don't regret those decisions, that cutting off of possibility, because somewhere out there, I took the other path.
Watching Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Pluto Files Tuesday night made me briefly regret I had not pursued astronomy as a career. It is a field I have a natural affinity for, one I can often intuitively anticipate as I see possible theories emerging. For instance, when the Kuiper Belt was discovered, I was convinced that Pluto would be found to be just one of many such icy bodies in the Belt. I was right. I also predicted the BioCentric theory in college, but that is fodder for another entry.
This morning I found the quantum split that would have taken me that direction. I think it's a big one. I think the me that did not have sex at a very young age (14) the one who remained socially awkward and isolated through high school, is the me that pursued astronomy. Not that I wasn't socially awkward in high school. There is no quantum universe I can imagine in which I was a jock or a cheerleader. But without sex, I would have been much more inwardly focused, and perhaps more driven to conquer math. At the University of Chicago, the joke in my dorm was that sex was just the sublimation of the drive to do math. :-)
I am mostly happy with the path my life has taken, and would not change it if I could. Except maybe to dump my ex a couple years sooner. But I find it comforting that somewhere, there is a universe where I pursued astronomy, where I became a radical activist, where I didn't marry so young at all and went on to other adventures. I don't regret those decisions, that cutting off of possibility, because somewhere out there, I took the other path.