Picture a single image with a million pixels. Now, imagine a million headshots within that image. Then, a billion people in a single frame. Next, consider some eight billion. And finally, all the zillions that have ever lived. The sheer number of individuals who have walked the earth is staggering.
On top of all that, there is the complicated journey of life itself. This complex, meandering road is different for each one of us. We meet at cross-sections, sometimes share a track or two with others, and continue our separate ways. Often, we scale mountains or cross oceans.
Each of us is walking towards a common endpoint- the inevitable end. Hitchhiking makes travel a little easier, but that is not always an option. Inescapably, we drag our tired feet and carry huge baggage on our shoulders and hearts. Some journeys conclude with tranquility, while others result in complete turmoil.
Some of us will take longer roads while others are destined for very short ones. In between, everything is ranging from a mild, pleasant breeze to hurricanes; a few predictable and others, a bolt from the blue. Invariably, there is a share of joy, sorrow, hope, hopelessness, turmoil, pain, and ecstasy for all.
Whether all find meaning before the close, I do not know. Maybe no one does. But it is amazing how many stories are running simultaneously. The magnitude of the drama of life and the infinite permutations of even a millisecond of every life are incomprehensible. For example, the heart-wrenching Ahmedabad plane crash intertwined hundreds of complex lives and stories, converging them to a single point in time, and the aftermath left marks on thousands more.
Even at the DNA level, every individual is different, leading to a different face, a demeanor, a style, a speech, and a mind. Every mind is incessantly thinking different thoughts, making different decisions. Now, if you subscribe to the multiverse theory, then that is where the mind gives up completely.
With so many lives and so many stories, how ordinary and immaterial must one life be? If one less person is born, would that make a difference to this vast and never-ending universe? If a speck of sand vanishes from the beaches, would anyone notice? Would a single strand falling from a headful of hair make any difference at all? Every day, millions of such strands fall, and the world continues to spin.
Yet and just yet, how each soul manages to be important is more incredible than all this. Each of us creates a personal universe. In this world of infinite possibilities, we manage to be perfectly unique, like a tiny piece of a giant jigsaw fitting where it must. Playing a role, unknowingly, until it is time to sign off. This is beyond amazing. As this is what makes us all stupendously unordinary, completely irreplaceable in a minuscule space and at a tiny point in time.
Every story is complex, intricate, and interwoven with tremendous detail. It begins at a point, takes a definite trajectory, and makes special appearances in many more stories. There is a paradox in this relative importance. From one perspective, you are the center of the Universe; from another, it matters not that you were born.
These thoughts are complex, and they lead us through a labyrinth to eventually just one possibility, a slight modification of Dumbledore’s wise words: it doesn’t do to dwell on complicated ideas and forget to live. This way or that, we must live.
(Author is PhD, PDF (USA), Assistant Professor cum Junior Scientist at Center for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning SKUAST- Kashmir. Feedback: [email protected])
