Life Is Random and Beautiful

I am sitting on the balcony in Eliska’s apartment on the last night before we leave. It is 1:14am. Outside, there is a shadowy row of apartments facing us, solitary cars that whoosh across the road, and a parking lot bathed in the gentle glow of streetlights. The city lights twinkle in the distance, just like they did the night when we chatted on the hilltop overlooking Prague past midnight.

As I try to etch this scene into my memory, it strikes me how astonishing it is that I am here.

For this to happen, I first needed to want to go on exchange – which only happened from a conversation with my mentor during my first internship. Then, there had to have been an administrative mistake, and my best backup option had to be KAIST. Next, I needed to meet Eliska and become good friends with her – far from certain, considering I only met her halfway through exchange and we only hit it off later. And then we needed to keep in touch through an entire year, and my schedule between graduation and work had to align.

And looking even further back? I would’ve gone somewhere different if I wasn’t at ANU – and I only chose to go after visiting Nick and Mitch and Eva in first-year uni. I applied to NMSS on a whim – I submitted my application on something like the last day and was surprised I got accepted. If any step in that long, long chain of events were different, I would be in a different reality. I would not be here.

What would I be doing at this moment in time if things had been ever so slightly different? Maybe I wouldn’t have gone to NMSS and stayed at UNSW, eking out an HD WAM and graduating a year and a half earlier. Maybe I would’ve gotten into Yale and led a completely different life in America. Maybe I would’ve interned at IMC instead and never felt the inspiration to go to exchange. Maybe – quite likely – I would’ve been assigned one of my 5 original exchange choices and never have come to Korea at all. Maybe I would’ve made slightly different friends, and my relationship with Eliska would’ve been a bit more distant, and she wouldn’t have mentioned this trip during one of our calls. Maybe I wouldn’t have become a STEM Cadet and instead graduated a semester earlier. Maybe I would’ve gotten a job offer at some other company and worked right after graduating.

If I replayed my life a thousand times, I believe this is the only life that would lead me here. I would’ve done something differently in every other one.

What would those lives look like? I can only wonder. There was a world where I went to Tsinghua and learnt more Chinese. There was a world where I stayed at UNSW and started working already. There was a world where I chose another degree or studied a master’s.

This is what makes me believe in the magic coincidences of life. This world only exists because the innumerable little aspects of my life arranged themselves in some specific way. It is water vapour gathering into clouds that form perfectly into a face. It is a monkey typing out Hamlet. It is a Boltzmann brain. Against all odds, my current life exists.

But you only live one life. And this is what makes it beautiful – the fact that you carve out a path that is utterly unique. One that no-one else, across all of space and time, will ever experience. That every moment when you make a choice, an alternative branch in the universe closes, but you try to live your best life anyways, and that the sum of all these decisions is what makes you you.

I don’t know when I will see everyone again. Maybe I won’t.

I’m afraid that Eliska and I will drift apart, and that I will no longer be invited. But more likely, I just won’t have the time. If this gathering happens again, I will have a new group of friends back home and not enough time to spend. I will be too busy trying to change the world, or focussing too much on my career.

Who knows? Maybe this is the last time I will see some of the people here. But you only get to live one out of all of your possible lives. There is nothing more to do but to cherish our time together. It’s beautiful, and it’s completely, utterly unique.