I love to daydream. I love to wonder about life from a practical perspective and an imaginative perspective. In particular, I love to imagine what-if life situations.
What if aliens exist or don’t exist? What if there are multiple parallel universes? What if the timeline has been written and we couldn’t change it? What if a time machine exists? What if we’re living in a simulation? What if we just stop being after we die? And among many what-if situations, there is one situation that stands above the rest in my mind. A particular situation that until today, still gives me wonder.
I came across the idea through Kurzgesagt’s youtube channel. You might want to give it a watch before I discuss my thought about it. It’s a great story.
Go on. I’ll wait here. It’s just around the corner. The video is 8 minutes long and it took even less to read the short story. Click here to read the story.
The story is fascinating. The video itself is… *chef kiss*
Last spoiler alert.
The story starts with a man who died on his way home. We, the reader and the author get the point-of-view of the other person, who kind of welcomes him into the afterlife. You could argue it’s the beforelife as well though. Both make sense nonetheless. A conversation happened between the man and us, the god. It went from his concern about his wife and his kids to “what’s the next phase?”. This is the part where I’m really hooked up. The earlier part was already amazing and it even gets better after that.
The man was going to be reincarnated back in time. The man is the humankind. He’s literally everyone. And here’s one of my favorite quotes:
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
It might sound cheesy but it’s the most enticing what-if scenario. It’s when “treat other people as you want to be treated” gets real. What if I am everyone? What if you and I are the same person but on a different reincarnation phase? We never leave our own thought through our life, so perhaps there’s a possibility (just like other what-ifs).
It helped me to humanize everyone. To imagine you who is reading this is a human, just like me. Or me but a different incarnation. To imagine a common person that you pass this morning is as significant as me and you. Isn’t that mind-boggling? We compete with one another and in the end, are the same person. They who exploit and they who are being exploited are the same person. It brings me awe.
I couldn’t really close this thought with anything wise or witty. It’s more like a fleeting note or a love letter or a fan letter. So, thank you for reading, me?