Parallel Lives: Reclaiming Power as Choice

There is an ocean of you. Waves of past selves and future selves, and the selves of choices unmade. This life, your life, is a but a drop. A drop in the weaving of possibility of your many, many lives.

I recently had an encounter with my parallel life. It was a surprising experience. Startling and interesting all at the same time. I have learned from my past, present and future selves, but had never given much thought to parallel selves and if they existed.

I certainly never would have gone looking for my parallel self, if I hadn’t met my husband. That is my parallel life’s husband.

He was a stranger in a room, and yet there was something incredibly familiar. Nothing extraordinary in that, I have met many people that felt familiar. Yet when I went to sense where this familiarity was coming from, I saw it was not from the past, but rather I felt a sideways movement. Like an elevator that can go in any direction. And when the movement stopped, this stranger and I were somewhere else. We were in a house that looked and felt like my own, even though I’d never seen it before. And the man before me was the same only…different. His hair was a bit shorter and he was clean shaven, and no longer wearing a t-shirt but a collared button down shirt. But what struck me the most was his confidence. It was a confidence that defined him, that came out of his being, imbued in his touch. And when he spoke there was absolute certainty in everything he said. When he referred to his work, I could tell he was good at it, that he loved being good at it, the way he loved being married because he was good at it. That is we were good at it. I could feel her now. What the “me” in this other life was feeling.

The me in this life wasn’t as certain, she was having some doubts. You would never tell it, to look at her. She was happy, and much more clear about things than I am. But the doubt was there, way beneath the surface. That doubt was what we had in common. I think her biggest doubt was in the certainty. As if certainty itself might begin to determine her life. But when she looked at him, when he held her, the fear and doubt evaporated. Their life together, that was her certainty. It anchored her. I could tell she loved who she was and what she did. She was important, she was needed, she had found a place in this life. I witnessed all of this. This perfect life.

In the moment, everything felt right. For them. But later, when my consciousness returned to this world, to this life, I began to wonder. I wondered what choices had been made to carve out that particular life. Me and her, we were the same body, and yet we were on such completely different paths, and those paths had changed us. I could feel the desires she had in that life, how it felt to embody them and they felt alien to me.

As comforting as that moment was, experiencing the success and fulfillment of that life, it was not my own. It was not my own for a reason. I did not want that life she had chosen. I did not desire the things that she did.

Somewhere along the way, the choices I have made, have changed me. They have defined me, in ways I had not imagined. The choices of that life, as beautiful as it was, were not mine. I had no claim to them, no claim to her future.

I thank her. This women in my body in some other weave of life. I thank her for reminding me, that I have chosen my life just as it is. That every day I make choices to be on the path that I am on. Even, with all its challenges, they are my challenges. Ones I have fought for, even if it doesn’t appear to be that way. I have called in these challenges to grow into the person I am determined to be, and that therefore I already am.

I know that meeting her, has changed both of us. I think my life has planted a seed of doubt in her own, but only so she can more easily see the choices she has neglected to make.

Doubt, in its own way, can encourage us to make the choices we may not want to make. Doubt guides us to the fear within, that we may have a moment of reckoning, and decide if we wish to let them choose for us or not. Are we ready for change or not. And fear, is just a word that represents that we want more from life. Fear is a longing that wishes to be allowed. That glimpse of life of what could have been, it revealed to me I have more to allow in my life.

I can have the confidence she has, it is just a choice away. And she can have a path that is as certain as mine. Neither is better than the other. After all, at the end of the day the ocean of our selves is all flowing in the same direction, arriving at the same shore.

A shore of awakening, where we realize and remember the first choice any of us made was to experience who we are, in all our many facets and potentials. We are an artist, weaving this web of life. And moving forward, there are a few more colors I may want to use.

There is an ocean of you. Waves of time, that recede every so often, that we may reconcile with the choices we have made. Waves of time that rush forward and past us, to encourage the choices ahead. And the momentum of choice, the momentum of your many, many selves, that are here to remind you just how incredibly immense, and powerful you are.

Choice is your superpower; it creates entire worlds. Use it, enjoy it, and give yourself a moment to marvel at your masterpiece, even if it is a work in progress.