"Everything Everywhere All at Once"
Or a paltry real-life comparison to the chaos of this movie
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Everything Everywhere All at Once
Did you see it? I watched this beautifully orchestrated cacophony of a movie by myself in a theater one Sunday. I loved the colorful, dynamic visuals, the genuine heartbreak of financial struggles enmeshed with the complex and often frustrating aspects of family relationships. It somehow smoothly ran the gamut from the pain of trying to connect with a surly teenager to how to manage spontaneous jumps from multiverse to multiverse. It imbued a bagel with existential symbolism; it pointed out the inanity of our tax system, AND it had exciting martial arts scenes. Then there were the googly eyes, which I now want to put everywhere, too.
I loved this movie. It is free-associative and weird in a way that seems random but intuitively makes sense. That being said, I would not want to live in it. Much the same way I love stories about climbing Mout Everest, I prefer to experience this kind of overwhelming chaos from the comfort of my couch in the known world where I don’t suddenly turn into a rock on a cliff in an alternate timeline.
In real life, bagels are just bread, but things are still chaotic.
This week, here on this earth where up is always up and bagels are always just dense, torus-shaped bread, even though my teenage kid hasn’t turned into a nihilistic destroyer of worlds, I have been given a run for my money. I’ve been looking for a full-time job for over a year. I’ve been trying to finish and publish my book for close to five. This week, nay these past two DAYS, the book got published in two different formats, and I received job offers for two different positions.
The things I’ve been after for years all happened in the space of 48 hours.
Jason predicted this — the job part of it. In his long experience in staffing, he says it happens all the time. A person works for months to get a job and goes through several cycles of despair, resumé reconfiguration, then renewed resolve. They are patient then impatient, then patient again. And then, one day, after they’ve been struggling for so long just to get in front of a live person for an interview, they have multiple offers.
I almost feel like the universe was waiting for me to finally publish my book to open the floodgates and allow me to have a full-time job. Despite the fact that doing all of this at the same time is periodically overwhelming, the timing isn’t bad. Having months of unemployment in which to concentrate on my book was stressful but useful.
Here’s the question, though: IS it the universe?
Is it some complex cosmic alignment that has fallen into place with the book finished that led to employment? Or is it something going on inside of me? Did I subconsciously, alter my job-hunting efforts once the book was out? Maybe I gave more attention to finding just the right work samples. Maybe I was slightly more animated or engaged in interviews. Or perhaps I had done so much sending in of writing samples and interviewing, I was better at it, and it had nothing to do with the book being done.
Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter whether it’s my own rhythms and energies or the universe’s. But it’s interesting to ponder, the way unknowable things tend to be. Things that will continue to be mysteries because an alternate-timeline Ke Huy Quan isn’t going to pop out of a broom closet to show me how my life is going in other universes. So here’s your question to ponder for the next few minutes, days or lifetimes while your mind wanders as you shower or sit on the toilet:
How much of what “happens” to you is internal but subconscious and how much, if any, is the result of some cosmic alignment greater than yourself? Or does the term “random chance” speak to you more than “cosmic alignment?”
How much control do you have over the way your timeline turns out?
I’m not making a point here, merely asking unanswerable questions to provoke you into a state of existential contemplation. It’s selfish, really. I live in these questions a lot, and I’d like some company.