The Multiverse is Real

But you might not be

Published on: Fri May 02 2025

Introduction

Full disclaimer, this post is not about multiverses. It is about the consequences of not taking things personally. And how this leads to you existing in different realities.

Act I: The Storm, the Wave and the Boat

There is a lot of shared experience among humans. Things that basically all 100% of us share, no matter when, where, or how you grew up. One of those things is conflict. From small everyday annoyances, like someone skipping the line in the supermarket, or larger conflicts, like breakups or a toxic relationship.

If something is done to you, in a negative way, it usually upsets you. Unfortunately for our mental health, it also feels like it was done specifically to you. What I mean by that, is that it feels personal. Why out of all of the other people here in the supermarket, did the guy decide to skip me?

We cannot help but feel like things that happen to us are personal. And this makes sense. After all, we are all the protagonist in our own movie. But the guy who skipped the line is not part of that movie. At least, not in a way that he is aware of. He is in his own bubble. And in that very moment he, for whatever reason, felt like he had to skip that line to either prove something to appease some sense of superiority inside of himself, or do something about the anxiety he is feeling because he is running late for something else, or whatever his brain decided to make him think or feel in that very moment. You could have been anyone. Ok except a 6’4” buff guy. But he doesn’t know, nor does he care, about the script of your movie.

This also goes for things, that don’t have to do with strangers. A friend who is upset with you, because you are always late. Your partner, because you keep leaving your coffee cups around. Even in these cases, if we try to describe the situation from the outside, these things do not need to feel personal. If someone is late, it is rarely because that person thought to themselves “you know what, I’m going to take my sweet time on purpose, just to upset them”. And even though this is not really a revelation for most people, they still cannot help themselves but feel upset and feel like this is an attack on them.

It is one thing to know that something is not about you, but another thing to get yourself not to feel that it is not about you. This is one of the things Buddhism teaches about meditation. It is about observing yourself. Observing your thoughts and how they make you feel. And by trying to take a step “outside” of yourself, being able to let things go more easily and not giving them so much control over your emotional state.

The reality for most people is that they’re on a small boat in the middle of an ocean, being hit by waves. Their boat is rocking left to right and sometimes they get the feeling that it is going to sink. But given enough time and effort into meditation you can stand on the shore and be away from the storm. You can still see the boat and occasionally you might step into the water, but you are outside of the zone of influence of the storm. You still see it, you can still feel it. But it feels different. It doesn’t feel like you are the one in the storm, even though you can still see the effects it is having.

Act II: The Multiverse

So what happens if there are 3 different people, who know you independently of each other. In different contexts, maybe even at different times in your life. Even if you think, that you are an authentic person. It won’t matter, since you are not the one controlling the narrative in their movie. You can influence it, but you cannot think what they think. The mind is a closed system (at least at this point in history). There is no way to live someone else’s experience. All we can do is try to communicate our experience with the language we are given. If I eat something incredible, all I can do is tell you about it and hope that you have had a similar experience that gives you an idea of what I just tried to communicate to you. But I cannot taste something for you. Even if we eat the exact same food, I cannot know if what you’re tasting is the same as I am.

Maybe we only truly come alive through other people… woah, that’s deep, man. But it seems true to an extent, doesn’t it? You rarely choose the people that surround you. Sure, at some point you might have chosen to keep a friendship with someone alive and not with another person, but then again you didn’t control what people would be there at your high school and who you would eventually meet. You just meet people and then your desire to make a connection with someone takes over. And then you either do or don’t make a connection.

If I exist as different versions in many people’s minds, does it even make sense to consider me me? It is worth noting that if this applies to us, it also applies to everyone else. In a sense, the version of your friend, that exists in your mind is completely unique. You are the only person in the world that knows this person the way you do. With the memories, the feelings towards that person and the way your interactions are filtered through your mind. But it wouldn’t feel right to think that this version of your friend is that much different from the version that another person has of them. After all, it is still the same person, right? They still exist if they’re not around me, they act similarly in our friend group with everyone else around.

And there are more interesting questions to ponder, if we take these thoughts to more places: Is there an “essence” to every person? Are we more ourselves, if we are alone, or are we just different?

I think these questions can humble oneself and make you realise how much of an illusion the feeling of you as a static unit is. It would feel weird to say that your 10 year old self is the same as your 20 year old self. But what about the 19 year old self and 20 year old self? What about you a month ago, or a week ago. Apart from your memories, obviously, how much have you changed?

The material reality might be, that the self is an illusion that exists in our brains. Through social convention we came up with names for each other so everyone feels like one person, irrespective of how much they’ve changed. Throughout the day we go through different states of being, different versions of ourselves. Tired, hungry, focused, excited, happy, sad, … just because it is one brain, doesn’t mean it is one you. Consciousness, although still largely a mystery, is not the black box that most people make it out to be. We understand quite a bit about it and that there are levels to it and that it is an ever changing dynamic stream of thoughts that pop into one’s head and gives us the sense of ownership over those thoughts. Even though you never truly choose a thought. They just appear out of thin air.

Trying to influence the narrative of your peers is a fool’s errand. That doesn’t mean that the next time someone asks you to put away your dirty dishes you should answer with “I am so sorry that in your reality the presence of those dishes is causing an emotional disturbance, but I cannot control how you feel about it”. Although true, you should probably just take care of your dirty dishes… So if you want practical advice, then try to remember that we are all starring in our own movies and sometimes our stories clash with each other. But taking something personally and being offended by it only costs you energy and will not lead to positive change. But you can still have empathy for them and try to respect their reality and modify your behaviour.

Act III: The Flame of Desire

The Ego: the reason we made it as a species and the reason why we are all so darn miserable. It is truly the greatest gift of biology. It makes us want to achieve greatness, push boundaries, conquer the stars. If we were all enlightened monks, that did not care about material things, who would take care of… literally anything?

To take a page out of Buddhism again, it is the flame of desire, that keeps us going. By desire, I mean the want to do anything. The desire to quench your thirst, to eat something to not feel hungry, the want to be loved, the desire to be worth something in the eyes of others. In this model, all suffering can be traced back to desire. So if you wanted to stop suffering, the only way to achieve this is to extinguish the flame of desire completely. To stop desiring is to stop suffering.

For a human, to desire is to be. What does it even mean to exist if you don’t desire anything. If you just are? There wouldn’t be a script for your movie. The page would be blank. But for pretty much all people this is not the script that they imagined. Heck, even if my script is going to lead to suffering, at least I tried something! They cannot fathom the meaning behind an empty script. That not desiring is even an option. They clench their script as hard as they can, because that way of existence is all they know. Everything in your mind is telling you to desire something. Even if the things you desire are noble. I want to be a good friend, have a kid, make the world a better place. But intentions do not matter, the flame is always red. The outcome of those desires will always be outside of your control to a large extent and thereby eventually lead to suffering.

Make no mistake, this is incredibly selfish thinking. Ironically if you want to reach Nirvana, you have to stop caring about the world. I am not going to tell you that you should, there is no right or wrong here. But if you agree with the logic of extinguishing the flame of desire, that is the only conclusion if you want to achieve an unbreakable form of happiness, only found on a blank page filled with nothing.

Closing Thoughts

Admittedly, we have explored quite a wide range of concepts here. Buddhism, the neurology of the brain, the philosophy of the self. But how they all fit together is very interesting.

Versions of yourself exist in different minds and you cannot control them, so I hope remembering that can help you not to feel so bad about certain things, even if in the moment they feel like the universe is against you. And if you really want to feel like you are more in control, giving up control is a very effective strategy. Realising that you cannot control the ocean, but you can stop being the person in the boat.

So try to take a step back from that movie you are living in. Take a look at the script. And then decide if you want to burn it.