I’d bloom in the infinite possibilities of every life that I lived

“There is a word in Korean — inyeon (인연). It’s an in-yeon if two strangers even walk past each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives.”

That was the passage that I ruminate on after all the emotions depleted over the movie, Past Lives.

If there’s “In Yeon” in life, where’s the string in our story will lead us to eventually? And what’s the meaning of all these?

I refused to lean on that theory. Because then, it would mean that our connection does have something to say, that at the very least, there’s a silver lining out of all this madness. That there’s meaning when you have reluctantly said that I hold any means to you.

Stephen Hawking when talking about the creation of intelligent beings in the universe in his book, Brief Answers to The Big Questions, said,

“evolution is a random process with intelligence as only one of a large number of possible outcomes.”

And I preferred to see life as that.

That the soul who inhabited the body that exited my mother’s womb happened to be mine, in 1 out of ∞ possibilities that it could turn to be others.

Including our encounter.

The first hi that we shared was an outcome of all the randomness of life, and we happen to be within reach, in the possible time and place. To meet you is not a grand scheme that god created, it just happens as a result of endless possibilities that could happen otherwise.

And no, our encounter is not a serendipity. It is a result of every little decision that we made in our past, that led us to this place and stage in life. And we happened to meet, but our meeting wasn’t an enigma, it’s not meant to be deciphered.

I just happened to be within your reach, available, easy, and convenient. But that was the made-up version of me when in reality I’m nowhere near all of those. I feel too much, my head is these jumbled threads that cry to be untangled, I’ve never been easy, and convenient would be the less likely word that I associated with.

Okay, if there’s such thing as In Yeon, now you tell me,

What was I to you in our past lives?

Was I some kind of your mistress since it seems easy to you to put me as one in this life,

or did I hurt you once and you put a curse on me and my lineage?

Because I was blindly and heavily infatuated with your breadcrumbs it felt almost like a spell I couldn’t break,

or did you stab me in the heart 1000 times without letting me die eventually?

Because it’s been months since my chest hurt, caged and it’s only you that could pull out the sword to liberate me, which you don’t have any intention of doing so.

If then to believe in past lives is to believe that we have met, that in this life we’re supposed to meet, and there is a meaning in our rendezvous,

I would rather not be reincarnated again in my next life.

and in this life, let me then grow to be this cynical old woman who has already unleashed an armor of romanticism ages ago that soon will be cremated and her urn will be spread among flowers so she could bloom instead.

So she could bloom in the infinite possibilities of every life that she lived.