Sliding Doors and Alternate Universes

     I watched a movie the other day called Sliding Doors. Gwyneth Paltrow played the main character, a young Englishwoman who has been fired, but it's right after that when the two worlds separate. In one she makes it onto the tube (the subway) and meets a charming man, then reaches home in time to discover her boyfriend in bed with another woman. In the other she misses the train and is mugged on the street trying to take a cab home, she doesn't discover this other woman at all.

     From there the stories take two completely different paths. In the first, she befriends James (the charmer from the Underground), their relationship grows, she develops her own business, and life goes on. In the second she stays with the boyfriend working pointless jobs to support him while he writes a novel, and cheats on her over and over. 

     In the end the two lines re-converge, but it reminded me of Doctor Who and that got me thinking: What happens every time we make a choice? If it's a yes/no sort of choice and we choose yes, does a separate world split off where we chose no? 

     I'd like to think so. I guess my conception of time is a little strange, but I see time like a tree where the branches split into different paths, but where they touch you can still hop from one path to another. Some people view time like a one-way road. Other people see it as a river where choices create only one reality. And still even more people think that there isn't really a choice, that everything is pre-ordained. I kind of get frustrated by that viewpoint because it takes away the individual's ability to change, either for the better or the worse.

     If time is pre-ordained, does that mean that Charles Manson was destined to be a serial killer from birth? Or that Mother Theresa couldn't help but be the model of a saint? I don't like the kind of world that theory creates. It's a world where we can't hope to be better people, or accomplish anything through effort--it all depends on what was decided for your life. It's depressing! I like the idea that every time someone makes a decision, a little bubble appears off our universe parallel to their decision where somewhere along the line you could jump back into the other universe, change your decision, or merge the two. It's hopeful and opens a world of possibility.

Just a thought....

Stephie