Many Worlds Within the World

Before having a baby you don’t realize how much stuff there is out there for having a baby

Before you have cancer you don’t know how much stuff there is out there about having cancer

Ditto about dying your hair back to blond after dying it black

Ditto about landscaping waterfront properties at risk for landslides

Ditto about converting to Hinduism

Ditto about moving to another country

Ditto about talking to kids about someone dying

Ditto about expunging a DUI from your record

Ditto about moving someone safely who can’t use their legs

Ditto about setting up a dental office

Ditto about how to get a cheesecake to set without cracking

Ditto about ordering bees for backyard beekeeping

Ditto about special education options in your school district

Ditto about getting a product manufactured in China

Ditto about incorporating an offshore company

Ditto about going to Mecca

Ditto about beatboxing

Ditto about starting a nonprofit that works within prisons

Ditto about being the executor of someone’s estate

Ditto about testing your house for mold

Ditto about finding a reliable nanny

Ditto about getting into Harvard

Ditto about how to get away from an abusive partner

Ditto about growing bonsai trees from seed

There are all these worlds you don’t see and you pass through them and by them all the time. Like a character in “The City and the City,” you walk through checkered realities, blind to the other worlds hidden in the contours of yours. But with the light at a slightly different angle you see that all this time you were walking right past them and couldn’t see them, a gorilla wandering through a basketball game, a face in the coffee beans.

Perhaps you don’t know about the world for expecting parents, but your parents did. They walked through the door into that world before they had you.

Perhaps you don’t know about the world for people with cancer, but probably someone you know is in it now. Last year 2,041,910 Americans walked into a doctor’s appointment or a hospital visit and found themselves in that world.

Perhaps you have naturally black hair. Perhaps you’ve never dyed your hair. Perhaps you are bald. Many people will never enter the world for people who want to dye their hair blonde again after dying it black. But you should know there’s a whole world there.

Most worlds can be easily accessed on the internet – forums, articles, government websites, blogs, youtube how-tos. But they exist in the real world too, they are corporealized in specific locations, objects and people. There are experts, there are meetups, there are contradicting schools of thought, there are books, there are scandals, there are fundraisers, there are ads, everything you have in your world, these worlds have those things too.

Life changes are marked by entering new worlds. There are some worlds everyone walks into, sometime or another. Some you know about, even if you haven’t been into them, but there are many you won’t know about until you find yourself inside them.