Parallel lives

I don't know about you but I've always been fascinated by the idea of parallel lives: lives with me being the main character but leading them in an extraordinarily different way.
Even now, when I am one and only (for someone or maybe more people), I have different roles and I behave differently in lots of situations although my personality is absolutely coherent. I am a mum, a wife, a teacher, a friend, I do swing, gardening, reading, housework, studies, etc. and let every bit of influence affect my integrated personality develop in some way.
However, as I am a coherent somebody, I have a set of convictions I live by and these might be formed by some books, movies, photos, people, etc. but their core and the inherence of it all do not change dramatically. When I crave for parallel lives, I mean that (in theory) I would be interested in living different lives to see what it would feel like not to be me, or a different me. It's not exactly "me" who interests me in these alternative realities but the life I could create with different choices from the ones I have made so far. Whenever I make a decision, only one way opens up, all the other alternative paths are shut down and this is how a person develops and creates or undergoes his or her life. The idea that I could start again and make different choices is absorbing in itself and also because I would be deeply excited by the other possibilities of my life that can never happen. If I make my own choices or my decisions are set or coded is a question I cannot answer but I would make a rough guess that they are both. Just as Forrest Gump's message goes: we are partly blown by the wind and partly determined by our circumstances and personality.
However, a famous and very inspiring Hungarian sociologist, Elemér Hankiss said each person should find a way to turn their life into a destiny and I have been pondering a lot about what he could have meant by this. I have just read a book that seems to have given me an answer: this is what I'll talk about in my next post.


Szerző: Erdész Fanni