multiverse, infinite Michaels, melancholy

As I say, I normally read at this time of morning. But, today, I find myself veering away from that. I'm reluctant to pick up Mr. Reed and his glorious liberation of the laboring classes…his soldiers and workers and peasants marching shoulder to shoulder under a blood-red flag.

Instead, I watch the dawn as it slowly works it way up from the east. From where I sit, I can see it. That is, I watch while the sky goes to something a little less than darkness, then pearl, and finally to light.

And I find myself thinking of very curious things. Infinity for one. Physicists now tell us we may be embedded in it. The universe itself may be only one of many… a bubble of space-time in a greater "multiverse" containing an endless number of such. Or it may be that our universe is deathless. And either way, given infinite time or infinite space or both, every possible combination of factors and features will occur again and again.

Which means that there may be an infinite number of other versions of me…some living lives exactly like my own, others living every possible configuration of life. There are, thus, Michaels who are kings and Michaels who are beggars, Michaels who painted the Mona Lisa and Michaels who discovered nuclear fission, Michaels who are great seducers and Michaels who are greatly seduced…

And about this possibility I am, and an infinite number of Michaels are, not quite certain how to respond. Do I/we feel some hollow consolation at the ersatz version of immortality it presents? Or do we all, as I suspect we do, experience the same melancholy—if only because of the certainty that we were not among the Michaels born to be rich and powerful and wise?