All right. I can do this. It’s writing, just like I’ve been doing, just without video games.
So I was sitting outside in the yard today, just looking around at the surrounding houses and thinking about who lives there (note: I don’t actually know the people who live in any of those houses). I know everything there is to know about my life and what it entails but I don’t know a single thing about the people who are ten to fifteen feet away from me at any given moment.
I was thinking, the four walls erected next to the ones I occupy encase an entirely different experience, an entirely different life (or lives) being lived. I found it quite astounding the more I thought about it, because I had never really thought about it before.
If you were to remove one side of our house and one side of the house next to ours, I could have a conversation with the occupants without us even having to raise our voices. I’ve always kind of enjoyed imagining the contents of enclosed spaces without their enclosure, and houses are kind of fun to think about that way. This time, though, rather than picturing the physical contents, I was thinking more about the memories held within the walls.
When I think that someone who is that close, who would be right next to me if it weren’t for a wall, has such a completely different personality, routine, thought process, and history than I do, it’s really kind of baffling.
I hope this is making sense to people who aren’t me. I told you my mind is weird.
Circumstance is a very powerful thing. When I look back on specific moments in my life and try to imagine them playing out differently, very rarely do they lead me back to where I am right now. Physicists talk about things like an infinite number of parallel universes, that doesn’t mean anything to me. There’s an infinite number of parallel lives to be lived, no two ever being the same. That is a much more powerful sentiment to me.
They live on the same street that I do. They unlock their front door fifteen feet from where I unlock mine. The view out their front window is incredibly similar to my own. And yet, their entire existence is so completely different from mine you can’t even compare them.
These are the things that go through my head, lying by the pool in 90 degree weather while I have an orange towel draped over my head.
I promise I’m going to write things that make sense. It was just very, very hot today.