Chance

In the classic Marlon Brando film, On the Waterfront, his character, Terry Malloy, a former prize-fighter turned “muscle” for the mob, reproaches his gambler brother, Charlie, who forced him to throw a  pre-championship bout, with the famous quote “I coulda been a contender.”  

If only Charlie had looked out for him a little bit, instead of making him take dives for the short-end money, then everything would have been different; Terry could have been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what he reckons he is.

Assuming the human free will is a thing (a contentious claim to be sure), then we all have similar watershed moments in our lives, when a single decision or chance happenstance determines our own future or even that of the world.

If only Gavrilo Princip hadn’t assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June, 1914, World War I might never have happened.  If only Barack Obama hadn’t made fun of Donald Trump at the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner on April 30, 2011, we might never have seen the first, not to mention the second ,Trump Presidency.  And in even weightier matters, if only scientist Percy Spencer hadn’t left his candy bar near the high-powered vacuum tube called a magnetron he was experimenting with in 1945, the world could have avoided the horror known as the microwave oven.  

It seems to me that the only way to account for these possibilities is to assume an infinite number of possible worlds in which all the potential outcomes do occur; there is a parallel Universe out there where WWI never happened, another where Trump never even runs for President, and still another in which popcorn is still only made on the stove.

This means that the life that each of us is living is only one of and endless number of experiences that are being had by other versions of ourselves; so don’t rush to make that yellow light; there’s another you that does.