Stories, Choices and Possibility

Have you ever read a book that stayed with you? I mean really stayed with you, like you were actually living in that book for days after you'd actually finished reading? This happens to me a lot. Stories get to me. They get under my skin and live deep in my bones for a while. When I was growing up, this meant my thrillers would keep me up late into the night and then seep into my bedroom. In order to get any sleep, I'd have to go wake my peacefully sleeping sister, beg her to come sleep with me and even give up my already warm side of the bed. She did it. Every single time. Thank heavens for her, because I'm not sure I would have made it through high school! Now, thankfully, my husband sleeps beside me (without any begging!) and wakes me up from any book residue that haunts my dreams. I don't read many thrillers anymore, because my sleep is vital to me now, and also because they so deeply color the world I live in. I don't want to be so close to the violent and high strung world they drop me into. But lately, two books I've read have really gotten to me. It was not violence or anxiety or ugliness that got to me with these two, however, it was possibility and the absolute affect of the choices we make.

What Alice Forgot by Laine Moriarty is a novel about a woman who, after falling off of her spin bike and hitting her head, wakes up with no memory of the preceding ten years. She thinks she is happily married, pregnant with her first child and very full of potential. She slowly realizes what happened and how the last 10 years have changed her. She's given this perspective that is nearly impossible for those with a head full of memories. She can look through her ten-years-ago eyes and be reminded of who she was and what was important to her then, instead of being muddled by experience and circumstance. Over time, things build so slowly we don't even see it happening. Like the family members who see your kids once every few months and remark on how much they've grown, or comparing their school pictures year after year. It's there, but the change is so incremental, it's hard to recognize. Life happens this way too. This book made me try, as best as I could, to do the same. Go back ten years and try and remember who I was, what my dreams were and where I was headed. Before the reality of kids and marriage. Before the messiness and sleep deprivation made their marks on my life. Thankfully, very much unlike Alice, I am quite happy with my circumstances and I think my 29 year old self would be proud (surprised, but that's ok) of who I've become and what my life looks like now. Through the shiny newness of early marriage and new pregnancy, it's hard to grasp the difficulty that comes along with theses choices. Then again, Shaun and I have always been nose-to-the-grindstone kind of people. We work really hard to make our reality and it has paid off in spades. The deeper question I rolled around, however, was the more personal one. What kind of person am I now and what would most surprise my 29 year old self. Things that were so desperately important to me then (career!), aren't even part of my life anymore. People with whom I spoke and interacted on a daily basis back then, I haven't talked to since then. Wow. The new people in my life are understandable, but some of the friendships that haven't stood the test of time would be startling. For several days, I was able to see each little part of my 'now' world through these 'then' eyes. Thankfully I'm quite pleased what what I've found, but what an inspiring reminder about life and change and growth.

The second book kinda made my head explode. I like it when books do that to me, even though I'm currently reeling in the aftermath. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch was recommended on NPR's Science Friday show several months ago. It's also a novel, but its story line is based in String Theory. I am understand String Theory like I understand much of physics. I am aware it is there, I know the most basic idea of the idea, but from there, I pretty much leave it alone. Science Friday recommended it as one of the best science books of the year, and one that is pretty accurate with the science part. So, I decided to try it out. I haven't read a whole lot of science fiction, but I really do enjoy it once in a while. I think trying to wrap my brain around something so foreign is good exercise and just plain fun. Lets just say that I'm still there, reeling in the ideas put forth by this story. I thought the science portion was perfect, just enough explanation to maybe get the gist of what was going on, but it was the story line, as usual, that put the whole thing into play for me. A physicist, married with a family, gets kidnapped and somehow wakes up in an alternate reality where he is a world renowned physicist who has figured out how to 'beat the system' and travel within the multiverse proposed by String Theory. Every choice we make, no matter how seemingly unimportant, produces two versions of reality and all realities co-exist within the multiverse. Or at least, something like that. Again, this theme of choices comes up and it makes me realize how incredibly important choice is in our otherwise mundane lives. Of course there are the big ones, I chose to come to Colorado for college instead of staying in New Mexico. Obviously this choice had a huge effect on the trajectory of my life (I wouldn't have gotten my job at Mentor Graphics where I met Shaun, for example). But there are little choices we make that we don't even realize have such overarching effect on our day to day. Have you ever missed being in an accident by just a couple of seconds and thought about stopping at the yellow light instead of zooming through? That was a choice, and String Theory would say that in one version of reality, you went through the light and ended up in that accident. At first, I was interested, and thought, 'of course, every decisions matters, yea, I get it.' But then, this story takes it to the extreme and really shows how vast and incredible this multiverse really is. There are versions of me on such a different path, it would be hard to even recognize me in there. The implications of how experience impacts us and how vital choices are really made me stop and think about where I am now and how I got here. Maybe I'm lucky to be here. Maybe I'm smart. Maybe I have no idea what could have been. I can't really tell right now, however, because those synapses up in my brain are still forging through, trying to make sense of it all.