There are a lot of theories about alternate realities. One can imagine entire universes, multiverses, and diverging timelines, different from our own. Undiscoverable worlds where a version of us is subtly or even sublimely different… than us, than our world that we know. But recently I’ve come to realize just how different people’s universes are right here on this earth, in this timeline.
We don’t need a multiverse to grasp completely different realities, they exist here and now. There are groups of people who live so drastically different lives, that despite sharing our current reality, their individual realities are so diverse that you could argue that they live in different universes.
A child born to a single parent in a war torn country today will live a drastically different life than a child born to a rural farm family. Who, in turn, would live in a completely different reality as a kid born to billionaire parents, or a kid born in the slums of a shantytown in an underdeveloped country.
Some people live with religious convictions that dictate many facets of their lives. Others follow science and cannot reconcile with the writings of a holy book. Still others find ways to merge the two and live with a faith that inconsistently matches science, but works for that person trying to make sense of the world.
Some people live with severe disabilities, their view of the world completely different due to limitations in perception, perspective or mobility. Some require medication to survive, while others medicate themselves to escape the world they live in. Whether stuck in or creating their own alternate realities, the lives they live are almost incomparable to our own.
Some people live with financial aspirations that rule how they relate to the world. They sacrifice other priorities in pursuit of wealth. Others make sacrifices for love, for family, for safety, and even for happiness. Each person finding their own motivations, but also stuck in their own worlds of status, health, and geography.
Within a 25 kilometre radius of downtown Vancouver there are people simultaneously living: in a tent, uncertain of when the next meal will be; renting an apartment that is less than ideal and yet too expensive compared to income generated; making significant earnings in a job that provides a comfortable life; living in a world of private jets and luxury restaurants. Each of these people live a life almost incomparable to the rest. What makes their existence similar to each other beyond their proximity on a map? Almost nothing.
We don’t need to live in a multiverse to appreciate that people live in completely different universes, right here, right now. While we experience the same planet, rotating around the same sun, in the same universe, our worlds are so drastically different that they are difficult to compare. We need not leave our one world to see the existence of many universes, each a stark contrast from the other. Each a microcosm unto itself.
