Written on the Body and Mind: Parallel Choices

[When I read Written on the Body, my socks were knocked into the South Pacific. Today, I found this lovely quotation from the author of that book. The ideas expressed so eloquently caused me to wonder where parallel choices could have landed me in the parallel lives we all could have experienced. Is it foolish to wonder such things?] “I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. Some people's emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. This is not fancy. If a potter has an idea, she makes it into a pot, and it exists beyond her, in its own separate life. She uses a physical substance to display her thoughts. If I use a metaphysical substance to display my thoughts, I might be anywhere at one time, influencing a number of different things, just as the potter and her pottery can exert influence in different places. There's a chance that I'm not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices I did and didn't make, for a moment brush against each other.”

Jeanette Winterson