Minor Meditation: String Theory

Of all the pleasant thoughts to start out the day, of all the moments to reinforce Buddhist teachings of calm, patience and acceptance, mine came from a history channel special on the theory of Parallel Universes:

In some Universe, Hitler met some really gorgeous woman who loved his art work. After the war instead of being rootless, he went back to her and they shacked up somewhere for years in the German countryside. He painted, she milked cows, he carved the cabinets for the kitchen, she smoothed out sheep's wool into yarn to make sweaters. And never once did he think about world domination while playing with his daughter whose hair was deep, dark brown - like her mothers.

In another Universe, after serving during world war II, James Earl Ray decided not to return to the states. Instead, reveling in the different opportunity-rich feel of Europe as compared to the poverty he came from in Illinois, he settled finally in Italy. He worked for years on a family farm dedicated to Olives, Figs and Pignolia. Eventually, he married the lovely daughter of the farm owner's sister, and spent the rest of his years happy in a sea of rich red wine and sunflowers.

In yet one more Universe, my grandparents are still alive. Upon reaching their 40s and 50s and staring into the sweet young faces of their children, they decide to change habits. Stick to the diets doctors gave them cutting back on the good rich foods and recipes they brought with them on their Great Migrations out of Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Georgia, and Tennessee. And they lived and lived... To see past their 60s and 70s. 

In a final Universe perhaps I never was, or was in a different form, or am in a partial piece. Perhaps in the 1300's the Bubonic Plague left Europe empty, clean, and dry. And instead of the  transatlantic genocide which spawned my meztizo familial line, I exist partially in a woman walking a lush forest path in what we know as central Rwanda - which has never seen a genocide or a person with White skin and blue eyes. Or maybe I exist partially in a Carib Indian  woman who sits on a beach in what we know as St. Johns,  watching her child play in the surf. Worried about sharks in a foot of water as only mothers can.

Why any of this?

Because on the subatomic level, when you get too far down for general contemplation, things are... fuzzy. So fuzzy other universes are possible. Down there, atoms are unstable. Particles vibrate. Things, electrons, move when you look where you expect them to be; they anticipate your observation. And the particles that make everything up? Well, they can be in more than one place at once.

And so can we.

So today, I am on that beach in St. Johns, and the String Theory that makes me Me? Well it's a bit of Redemption Song and Canon in D and My Little Brown Book - and its vibrating slowly, along with the surf.