5/8/03
I've debated whether or not to actually post this for fear that people
will think I'm nuts. That may or may not be the case, and I'm sure there are
at least a handful that are dead sure that I am. I've thought a lot
about this, and I'd hate to die in this universe without having left these
thoughts, though, so I'm going to go ahead and make it public.
I've never been particularly religious, though I count myself lucky to have
started to gain some spirituality in the past year, and it's added a great
deal to my life. As many people who know me are aware, I'm fascinated by science,
all kinds of science. Theoretical physics is probably what fascinates me more
than anything else in the world. Any time I start to comprehend some little
nugget of it that I've been thinking about for years, I expect that God will
strike me dead for having obtained some sort of forbidden knowledge.
That recently happened to me on a trip to Mexico. I spent a lot of time
thinking about cosmology and the geometry of the universe, and suddenly, it
all became really clear to me. A lot of things about cosmology fell into place
when I suddenly understood this one little nugget about the geometry of the
universe, and really, I actually thought God was going to strike me dead for
knowing this. I had never really felt that way before, but it really felt
like forbidden knowledge.
But that's really a digression from the topic at hand, which is death itself.
I've often wondered why everyone is so afraid of death. Me too, when it's been
close. Think about it. What's the one thing that every living person has to do?
Die. And what's the thing that scares most people in the world? Death. Strange,
isn't it?
These days, dying might scare me, but death doesn't. I've been saying for a
long time that I'm going to live forever. I didn't really believe it until
fairly recently, though. Right about now, you're probably thinking I'm
really nuts.
Okay, well, this is where Quantum physics comes into play a bit. Anyone
familiar with quantum physics knows about the infinite universes theory. Well,
for the benefit of those of you who aren't versed in basic quantum theory, I'll
give a brief overview, and don't worry, you don't have to be understand
physics to understand the ideas. You just need to know a lot of math to do the
physics, which we'll skip. The basic principle is that everything that can happen
does, in fact, happen. The baseball goes through the window or it hits the
wall and misses the window. In quantum physics, there really is no "or". They
both happen. Whenever there's an event that can or can't happen, the universe
basically splits in two, and the event happens in one universe and not in the
other. This has been going on since the beginning of time and will go on until
the end of it, if there is one.
Humbug, you say. That's all just physics nonsense. Stuff in the math to
make the equations work. Well, physicists thought that for a long time. But
not so long ago, experiments actually started to show that this may not just be
in the math, but may actually be real. I'm not going to go into an explanation
of these experiments, but if you want to learn a bit more about the subject,
I'd recommend the book Other Worlds by Paul Davies. Mr. Davies is a
world renowned physicist and prolific writer on the subject. While the subjects
are sometimes very hard to understand, he has a knack for making it understandable
for the non-physicist.
So, anyway, if you buy into the idea that the universe splits at every event
and that everything that can happen, does happen, then really, death becomes
a non-issue. Why? Well, because think about it. How many times in your life have
you come close to death? Not even inches from death, but you could have fallen
from a high place, you might have stepped in front of a car. These things happen
to all of us, I imagine. Today, in fact, my mother and I were discussing all
of the things we've done where we recall coming close to death.
The point is, in infinite universes, I did die. Except I didn't die in this
universe, I died in one that split off. But I'm still here. And that's my point.
I'm starting to think, I'll always be here. Every time I would have died, the
universe is going to split off and I will have died in the one I'm not in. You
could put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, but there's always a chance that
gun isn't going to fire, and my bet is, it never would. At least for the person
doing it. Don't worry, I have no intentions of testing this theory. I'll let
nature take her course, thank you very much.
But what about old age? Everyone dies of old age eventually, don't they? Well,
not necessarily. Just as the infinite universes theory says that everything that
can happen does happen, everything that's possible, not necessarily just in
the nature of things we know, but in the nature of things we don't know, is possible.
There are universes that have split off long ago where death doesn't exist. Or
where we've discovered some medical breakthrough that allows us to live forever.
And that, my friends, is how I suspect, I really will live forever.
Of course, from other people's perspective, in those universes where
I've died already, I'm dead, and maybe they're sad. I'd feel bad about that and I
would miss them, but hey, they're in another universe. So while we see death around
us, we'll never die ourselves. And at some point, we'll end up in a universe
where death is just so improbable, that maybe we won't see death anymore.
Like I said, I have no plans to test my theory. And the problem is, it's
really beyond testing. Because every time you're supposed to die, you don't, and
no matter what the circumstances, it's going to seem plausible or, at the very
least, possible, in whatever universe you find yourself. And you're never going
to know that the universe split and you just died in another one. Everything's
going to just go on as it always has.
Honestly, I don't really know if I believe in this 100%, but as time goes on,
it's started to make more and more sense to me. It certainly explains why I've
beaten the odds so many times. Falling out of trees, motorcycle accidents,
sticking my hand in a hot-tub with 120 volts pumping through the water. I could
go on and on. That last one says a lot. How many people do you know who have
stuck their hands in a pool of water with 120 volts of house current running
through it, and not only didn't die, but didn't even get hurt (by some freak of
nature, I just wasn't grounded). And that wasn't my first run-in with electricity
that should have killed me.
Really, the odds just don't add up. At least not in a non-quantum, non-infinite
universes, universe.
Thinking of all of this, and all the implications of the theory is sometimes
a bit overwhelming. But I have yet to find any logical errors with the line of
thinking, which leads me to believe that it's possible, and I think that's kind
of cool. So if it's all the same to you, I'm going to keep on living forever.
