Philosophizing over TV

“In places parallel, I know it’s you. Feel the little pieces bleeding through…”
- Nine Inch Nails, Beside You in Time


I’ve been following Flashforward quite religiously. For those who have been living under a rock, the show started with everyone blacking out for exactly 2.17 minutes. In that brief period, everyone in the world who blacked out saw a glimpse of his or her future, six months to the date.

Sonya Walger is Olivia Benford, the wife of Special Agent Mark Benford. Her flashforward saw the dissolution of her marriage and that she was having an affair with another man, Lloyd Simcoe, played by the wonderful Jack Davenport. In the episodes that follow, it shows her trying to fight that future to save her marriage from ruin.

In this week’s episode, Sonya arranges for the transfer of Lloyd’s son to a private and secure facility following Lloyd’s public admission that the blackout had been caused by his group’s scientific experiment gone awry. They talk briefly, and find out that they had almost gone to the same university, and that Olivia had almost lived in the same apartment building where Lloyd had met his wife.

“Are you aware of the many worlds theory?” Lloyd asks Olivia. She says she is not, and Lloyd explains the concept of parallel worlds. He explains that all the choices and decisions that we could have made are being played out in these parallel worlds as if we have made them at all, and it will be forever played out simultaneously with this reality that we know and live in.

Lloyd pointed out, if only Olivia had gone to Harvard instead of marrying Mark, she would have probably lived in that apartment building, they would have met and chances are, would have actually lived their happy ever after together. But seeing that they haven’t done all that, they both have to live with the consequences of their decisions.

It amuses me a great deal to watch the scene unfold, to hear a character talk about it and seemingly echo my thoughts. Of course, my thoughts were in no way connected to what Olivia and Lloyd were going through with their lives, but more with what was going on in mine.

I had often wondered if he and I met another place, another time, would things be different. I remember us talking once and I had in passing mentioned vacationing in the city where he used to live and work. Maybe he was thinking of the same thing, what if we had bumped into each other, me as a tourist, he as, well, him.

The places I’ve gone were the places he had lived in at one point. But our paths never seemed to cross until it was time for us to do so, only fate chose for us to meet a little too late when everything was different and almost impossible.

I always wanted to ask him, had we not met the way we have, and he had just seen me walking down the street in the city where he is now, would he even try to approach me, and win me?

But sometimes I get to thinking, does it really matter that we didn’t meet during those times? Because we did meet, and isn’t that the point? It seems that we can change the details, the steps that lead to the end as much as we want, but the outcome remains the same.

How much of our lives then is shaped by our choices and decisions? How much of it is shaped by fate?

But if he and I were bound to meet, the only question that remains to be answered is, to what end? To what purpose?