Parallel universes

Compassionate physicists are probably responsible for designing this theory of parallel universes. It contends that our particular universe is only one among an infinite number of parallel universes. Furthermore, it assures us that all the things that somehow elude us in this our specific time and space – our unfulfilled desires, failed hopes and aborted dreams – have already come to pass and comprise the material existence of our alternative lives in some of those other parallel universes.

In some parallel universe, every failed person in our own universe is a success. Romeo and Juliet are not "starcrossed lovers" but are blessed by fortune and live to a ripe old age in perfect love and harmony. The Philippine state of the nation beckons with patriotic leaders, nationalistic citizens, an economy whose GDP 10 years running had grown at 10 percent, a government whose budget regularly shows surpluses instead of deficits and a civil society that, even fully empowered, nevertheless refuses to raid the generously endowed state.

The idea of parallel universes is arguably better than most religions’ best promises. One does not have to wait for another life – or work assiduously through a series of lives – to feel better. One only needs to reflect on his/her already existing, better state of life somewhere else. Whatever one does and whatever one fails to do in this present life in no way disables that other better life. Parallel universes are a great comfort to people who, for whatever reason, are miserable in their specific universe.

Reflecting on friends and colleagues who left the country and pursued a life elsewhere may not have the same consoling effect as the idea of parallel universes. I know someone – a UP professor – who appears wistful as he relates his particular Diliman universe to that of a former colleague – someone who had left the UP and migrated to Canada sometime in the early 1970s. With the author’s permission, I reproduce parts of his rather revealing letter:

Dear N,

Yes, I had my UP class yesterday and survived my bright but lazy wards. After which, being hungry, I treated myself to fishballs and chatted with the vendor and his wife. They have a mobile stall just between the Faculty Center and the Liberal Arts building, immediately adjacent to the FC parking lot.

The fishball-squidball-chickenball-and-quikiam couple makes more than I do in UP and without having to worry about taxes, too. More than a thousand pesos a day, net, they tell me. I find it easy relating to them since they may be considered my material superiors. However, it is really strange that they are so deferential with me even as they often subsidize my fishball fares. I could be wrong but sometimes I think I see pity in their eyes as they refuse to accept my money come paying time.

Both husband and wife have IQs probably much higher than our often laid-back students. So it is easier and more edifying to discuss the national economy and the country’s governance imperatives with them. They do not ask for perks, privileges or prerogatives, but simply do what they have to do to make a living. They do not insist on having the public subsidize them nor stridently insist on their right to be served at the expense of those much poorer than they.

Many of our students do. This may well be the curse of UP Diliman and UP Padre Faura – a curse fortunately still sparing the other UP units – that many students in these two campuses are sybaritic parasites preying on their helpless national host, our people. Here, many students’ greatest difficulty is not physics, mathematics or English. It is geography, more particularly the geography of parking lots for their new model cars. (The father of one of my students recently gifted her with a Honda Civic ESI for finishing her course in UP. As she showed me the new car, she casually remarked that its cost was about the same amount her family saved in sending her to UP instead of a nearby private university. I thought she must really be a very bright student.)

Morning – daybreak – comes as I write this letter and the Diliman campus is slowly coming to life. The acacia leaves are beginning to waken and I now hear the first rumblings of a cruising tricycle. Soon people will soon be walking by our dilapidated house, rushing to take their rides on UP’s main streets, getting entangled in heinous off-campus traffic and somehow getting to their workplaces an hour or more beyond their official starting time. No worry. Lateness is nothing to apologize for anymore. Everyone understands, everyone forgives and eventually everyone forgets. Nice survival technique, works every time with mostly everyone.

Sometimes I wonder how it would have been if you had not been so smart and had not left our Department for a university position in Canada.

But you ARE smart and only the rest of us tarry here in Diliman for long, overly long!

Your stranded former colleague,

X.

To this particular teacher, fairly typical not only of those in UP but presumably any place else in the country now, the idea of parallel universes would be immensely kinder. At times, science – not religion – may afford the greatest consolation. For truly desperate people, even religion could take too long. Science with its parallel universes might be able to provide a much quicker fix.