Life is an infinite number of possible reorganizations

"Any decision you make, every word you say, every thought you have, will lead you to a different life."

——"The whole universe in an instant"

A while ago, I watched a movie "The All Cosmos", and the evaluation of this movie was relatively polarized. I liked it very much, and I hated it a lot. But I'm a clear-cut former myself, and I really like this movie because there are several scenes that strike a chord with me and resonate with me.

Evelyn, the protagonist of the film, is a married woman who is experiencing a midlife crisis. She eloped with her husband to the United States when she was young, gave birth to a daughter, and runs a dying laundromat in California. She faces a series of life challenges. Tax and business issues.

And although her husband is a kind and optimistic person, in her eyes, he is weak and incompetent, his daughter is rebellious, and he is gay. mess.

Just as they were about to be called by the Audit Office to talk about taxes, the husband's soul suddenly became an alternate universe in the elevator and gave Evelyn a set of instructions on how to enter the so-called "multiverse". ”, seeing himself in different parallel worlds, and at the same time fighting against the great devil Jobu who travels in different universes.

The condition for entering a different universe is to do things that you would never do and dare not do in the real world, such as deliberately wearing the wrong shoes, punching an auditor, kissing a stranger, eating chewing gum that someone else has eaten ...and even a lot of absurd and bizarre clips. The wonderful and magical plot officially opened after Evelyn entered a different universe and embarked on an adventure.

The themes presented in this film are extremely rich and full of meaning. The topics of mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, adulthood and coming out, existence and nothingness, success and failure, difference and belonging, generation gap and information overload are all used in different ways. The switching of parallel universes completely connects the themes of these fragments.

Since there are so many topics, I would like to choose three topics that resonate with me the most to make a brief sharing:

Intergenerational fragmentation, choice and success, existence and nothingness.

A little reminder: This article will have spoilers. It is recommended that you may have a better viewing experience after reading the movie. If you don’t mind, you can watch the movie after reading.

(1)

generational split

If the "intergenerational split" chapter can be simply summed up in one sentence, then this film is just a story about the restoration of the parent-child relationship between an immigrant Asian family who immigrated to the United States.

What kind of existence are Asian Americans?

In China, we will use the three words "ABC" to refer to the Chinese who were born in the United States and grew up in the United States. When I was researching the content related to the shaping of individual growth by cultural soil, I found that the difficulties faced by Asian Americans in the United States are no different. It's about "identity".

On the one hand, they have typical yellow-skinned and black-haired Asian faces. On the other hand, the culture, education, and growing environment they have been exposed to since childhood have determined that their character and identity will not be close to Eastern culture.

In the American environment, Asians are destined to encounter a lot of discrimination and bullying from white people. Friends who have watched "Ip Man 4" should remember what the daughter of the Chinatown boss encountered in American high school. A clip of school bullying by white classmates.

If you can get in touch with overseas Chinese, you will find that many young Chinese (pure yellow blood) are not willing to admit that they are Chinese. The basic expression is "my parents/my grandparents" are Chinese, but It is rare to take the initiative to express words such as "I am Chinese".

Therefore, this also causes many Chinese people to be full of disgust and hostility when they see such "Chinese" who have Asian faces but are unwilling to admit that they are "Chinese", thinking that they have forgotten their ancestors, eating inside and out, Fascinating foreigners.

In a cultural environment dominated by whites, it is a common phenomenon for Asians to be disrespected and even to encounter discrimination. In a Chinese environment, Asians will find it difficult to produce so-called so-called because of the lack of education in Chinese and Chinese civilization. not to mention the humiliation and injustice suffered by some Asians because of their Asian appearance, and then they will have hatred for the Chinese. This is where the ABCs will be in a huge cultural divide.

In this film, although Evelyn's daughter has a Chinese face, she grew up in the "law of the jungle" environment under capitalism, and she is full of behavioral characteristics that many parents hate or even feel ashamed of.

Whether it's wearing fancy clothes to show your personality, swearing in your mouth, smoking cigarettes, chewing gum loudly with tattoos, full of hostile eyes and aggressive personality, or even holding male genitals as a weapon, your body is perverse and ruthless. Strong", expressing his uneasy atmosphere. This is also destined to have a huge gap between generations.

Parents, as the first generation of immigrants, are still accustomed to China's collectivist culture, and still retain their recognition of Chinese culture in their bones. They are relatively hard-working, kind, gentle, and honest, while their children, as a discriminated minority, want to live in the jungle. To survive in society, you have to grow fangs to protect yourself.

Parents who grew up under the "conservative" cultural education, on the one hand, cannot help their children gain respect from others in an environment where the weak are the strong, and on the other hand, because of their children's deviant behavior, they do not recognize or accept them, and even regard them as their own shame.

The separation of intimacy brought about by the family will once again aggravate Asian children to become spiritual homeless, unable to find any cultural identity and sense of belonging.

Interestingly, the film sets the villain Jobu as Evelyn's daughter, which intensifies this intergenerational conflict.

Evelyn's daughter has the ability to travel through multiple universes after becoming Jobu (the Great Demon King), and the appearance of Jobu is precisely because Evelyn over-exploited her daughter after discovering her talent in another parallel universe (Alpha universe). As a result, she traveled through a large number of different universes and felt overloaded. After having a large number of different life experiences and experiences, her mind was directly broken, and she completely became a blackened version of the villain Jobu.

Evelyn's father also has the characteristics of a typical Chinese parent. He has a strong desire to control his children. He even hopes that Evelyn can kill her "scum" daughter. A way to try to expel Jobu from her daughter's body. When her father found out that her actions were against his will, he even sent his subordinates to encircle and kill his daughter.

Why did the director set his daughter as a "Demon King" and make her travel in different universes, becoming an unstable factor that destroys the world?

In fact, Jobu itself represents the majority of teenagers, who cannot find the meaning of self-existence in the family and society. They are controlled and degraded by their parents. In the face of countless external pressures, they will try to dress up in fancy clothes, organize and even Join various subculture circles, seek "individuality" and find belonging.

The term "subculture" was coined by American sociologist Milton Gordon in 1947. He believes that "subculture" refers to different cultures based on different social factors such as race, economy, religion and region.

Since the 1950s and 1960s, young people have assembled into various subcultural groups. They use independent and alternative dressing symbols and alternative behaviors advocating music, violence and alcohol to declare their dissatisfaction and rebelliousness to the mainstream world.

Previously, Li Yifan gave a speech in 2020 - "I Filmed Killing Matt". At that time, in order to understand the cultural phenomenon of Killing Matt, he specially interviewed Luo Fuxing, an early founding member of Killing Matt, and asked him why would be killing Matt.

Luo Fuxing said that he went out to work when he was young and was often deceived and bullied, and many people had similar experiences. "Sometimes hair gives you courage, and there is a sense of shock from the outside. In everyone's impression, this is a bad boy, and a bad boy feels that he will not be bullied."

Li Yifan said after the investigation:

"I sometimes reflect on myself, how ridiculous I used to think to resist this era through self-denial. Many of them haven't even learned to protect themselves, how can they resist.

This is actually a bunch of the poorest people, they just turned on a device to protect themselves. But our society is really very intolerant. Killing Matt is just a little bit of decoration to protect himself through body modification, just a little bit of heterogeneity, so that they are regarded as heretics by the whole society. "

In the same way, although Jobu is murderous and ruthless, she has the characteristics of countless teenagers: confusion, chaos, and nothingness. It's gone through everything, but it's completely broken.

But Evelyn thinks that those vulgar subcultures and popular elements are demons that corrupt her daughter. At first, she never thought that Jobu (black state) was also her own daughter, and she did not believe that her daughter was so extreme, evil, On the scary side, it will think that the daughter is just being manipulated.

In the eyes of Asian parents, this pursuit of fancy clothes is not a young man who has lost himself looking for a branch of self-salvation in the quagmire of despair, but an ungrateful depravity.

Evelyn herself was controlled by her father when she was growing up, and now the intergenerational transmission has imposed this control on her daughter, and she is unaware that she is overprotective and demanding of her child, killing her self-subjectivity. perception, and this creates this kind of object culture that expresses itself in strange clothes.

Fortunately, Jobu searched for Evelyn in countless universes not to kill his mother, but to hope that his mother could feel her own feelings and pain, and hope that her mother would help her find the meaning of existence and tell her softly, There is still something in this world worth loving.

"The Universe in a Moment" may seem like an absurd comedy, but at its heart it is a family tragedy. Evelyn eloped with her husband back then, but her father didn't stop her, she couldn't get her father's care since she was a child, she was approaching her career failure when she was middle-aged, her marriage was in crisis, and her relationship with her daughter was tense. The sense of suffocation towards life once again continued to the next generation.

The theme of this part of the family relationship resonated strongly with me to a certain extent. I also grew up in a high-pressure environment under control, which led to rebellion, rebelliousness, tearing, and refusal to communicate, and the relationship with my parents was extremely tense. It was not until a few years after leaving home completely, that as my mind grew and I learned to re-examine with a more tolerant attitude, family relations tended to ease.

Of course, parents will impose their unfulfilled life wishes on the next generation, expecting their daughters to replace themselves to achieve that goal, but in this process, they ignore the child's self-will as a new independent individual.

(2)

choice and success

So what kind of life is considered to be successful? Famous or rich?

I think about "success", everyone has a set of their own imagination and description to describe "success" in your eyes.

For Evelyn, when she opened parallel universes one after another, she kept witnessing her possible life scenes, especially in one of the universes, she did not choose to run away with Waymond, she would practice martial arts, And as a kung fu actress, she became a big hit in Hollywood.

She even turned her head to her current husband after seeing this double universe and said, "You don't know how successful I am if I didn't marry you" (If I didn't marry you, you don't know how much I am success.)

But now she never imagined that in spite of her parents' dissuasion, her elopement with her husband to the United States would just become the starting point of her life failure.

And the husband who came back from the Alpha universe told her that because she was the most useless, the most unsuccessful person in all the universes, the one who never chased any dreams, and the worst person, she became a unique existence out of ten thousand.

I think this part is very wise from Eastern philosophy. If I still remember the dialogue when Zhang Sanfeng taught Zhang Wuji Taiji swordsmanship, I am still deeply impressed:

"Wuji, how much do you remember what I taught you?" "Master Huitai, I only remember half of it"

"Then, what about now?" "Half half left"

"Well, now?" "I've forgotten everything!"

"Okay, you can go..."

Why "forget" can "get" instead?

"Forget" doesn't mean literally, but means not being stuck with moves and losing the ability to deal with infinite situations. Look deeper, and grasp the more original things behind the moves from the moves. From remembering to being like instinct, you can finally make your own moves without being limited by the original moves.

You will find that Zhang Wuji mastered all kinds of martial arts in Yitian Tulong Ji, Luohan Boxing, Jiuyang Shengong, Qiankun Great Movement, Taiji Sword... But Taiji Sword became his important martial arts in the future, because the philosophy contained in Taiji is far higher than many martial arts. One trick to learn.

Tai Chi and Taoism's "wu" is similar, "wu" is not nothing, Wu is an undifferentiated but full state. There is something out of nothing, existence is differentiated from nothing, and moves are differentiated from the more original and abstract things behind it.

Taijiquan swords are originally designed to break the form. The world's martial arts are soft and strong, fast and slow. Once you choose one side, you will be restrained by the other side. Taiji swordsmanship combines rigidity and softness, and you can go fast or slow. You can only understand the origin. , you don't have to learn many moves, you will learn them automatically.

In the same way, the husband of the Alpha universe said to Evelyn, "You can do everything because you can't do anything well."

It sounds like a very contradictory dialogue, but if you taste it carefully, you can find that the truth in this coincides with some concepts in the "Taoism" doctrine, yin, yang, no, and everything. It is constantly switching forms.

If a path is fixed, then the mind set will be more shackled to a person, and it will be extremely difficult to change and bypass other worlds. It is precisely this world that Evelyn doesn’t seem to get anything, so she can do It will soon pass by analogy, and it will open up greater potential.

In the film, there is a black bagel suspended in the air. This bagel was created by the great devil Jobu. After experiencing and experiencing countless lives, she put all the cognitions in her mind on a bagel. .

This bagel has become an important symbol of the film. It seems to have some, but it is really nothing, but the center of the bagel is a huge hole, which seems to want to swallow the meaning of everything.

At this time, because of her perception overload, she has experienced countless lives and gained everything, but she eventually fell into a state of nothingness, and only wanted to escape the torture and swallowing of metaphysics. Once people lose the pursuit of meaning, then "self-destruction" is not far away.

After Jobu found Evelyn, she hoped that her mother would feel her pain and nothingness, and bring her into chaos together. When Evelyn traveled and experienced countless multiverses, she finally entered the same state of consciousness as her daughter. , she couldn't bear it, so she tried to start destruction and destruction in different universes, and even stabbed her husband with a knife in one universe.

But at this time, the worthless husband in her eyes became the key. Although her husband does not meet the definition of "success" and even looks "stupid" and "weak", her husband's core has always been kind and optimistic. This is his way of life.

Seemingly weak and incompetent with a kind-hearted husband, he has helped Evelyn solve all kinds of conflicts in her life countless times, whether it is to persuade the auditor to relax the deadline with good words, or to help Evelyn dance with the guests in order to make the guests happy. Flinn made a rescue, and he was always saving the difficulties in his life in his own way.

It was this kind of kindness and love that made Evelyn wake up, she learned to fight like a husband, and at this moment, an eye appeared on her forehead, and I thought it was "I see." you" expression.

In the end, this way of life from her husband not only helped Evelyn to get out of the state of near destruction after experiencing chaos, but also allowed Evelyn to save her daughter who had fallen into a state of nihilism.

The devil Jobu cried and asked his mother, since you have seen the infinite possibilities of life, why did you choose to return to the most failed universe in your life?

All this seems to point to "mother's love". After experiencing all the pain that her daughter has suffered, a mother who wants her son to become a phoenix understands and respects her daughter's choice, but whether Jobu chooses to fall from the cliff or push himself away My mother, when she chose to jump into bagel's black hole, she did not stop her, but expressed her will of "I respect you", I saw your existence.

Whether you succeed or fail, whether you are good or not, in my eyes, only you, when I look at you, you mean something to me.

I choose you not because you are a successful person on the outside, but because you are my daughter, I love you, and I just want to accompany you.

In another universe, Evelyn gave up her elopement. Although she became a well-known Kung Fu movie star and achieved worldly success, Waymond worked hard in the United States and became a famous entrepreneur. They were not together and had no daughter. , but after seeing the multiverse, Waymond still told Evelyn that he would unswervingly choose the "worst universe" to be with her.

At the end of the film, Evelyn's family returns to normal life. Everything is like a dream that never happened, making it difficult to distinguish whether it is imagined or real.

Evelyn is still the housewife who needs to go to the tax office to file taxes and run a laundromat, but her close relationship with her husband and her daughter has become happy.

From an external perspective, there is no "success" at all, but from the inside, everyone's heart becomes gentle and friendly. This reshaping of "success" just exceeds the mundane meaning presented in other parallel universes. success.

Back to myself, the biggest resonance in the film is that every choice in life will push you to a completely different life script. This is also the sentence that popped into my mind after watching the film:

Life is an infinite number of possible reorganizations.

So I decided to name the title of this article this sentence.

Looking at myself at the moment, I also imagined that if I didn't make that choice at that time, if I didn't think about making a decision at that time, what would happen if...

I am deeply aware that it is the combination of countless choices that have made it to this day. But today's self, the occupation, the environment, the people I meet, the partner I choose, the friends I work with, everything I've experienced... are all a combination of probabilities, which in my opinion to very little.

If there are no "accidents" caused by those "momentary thoughts" in life, perhaps my life script will be carried out in another way in another parallel universe.

My career won't be freelance, my partner won't be around, I won't be in Latin America at the moment, my "success" mentality won't be the mentality of this moment, maybe my life will be more than it is now Well, if I succeed, maybe my life will be worse.

But today, I am very satisfied with the life I have at the moment, even if I am glamorous and successful in another universe, I don't think I will be envious, because I am not attached to the greed of "success" in the worldly sense, so I am very grateful to the self who pushed me to this moment, and I am grateful for countless momentary thoughts that led me to the path of my life today.

How will the future script be written? I don't know, but it must be made up of many temporary choices. Will it lead me to better or worse? I think as long as I have kindness and love, then no matter how turbulent the external environment is, life will not pass. bad.

(3)

existence and nothingness

In my eyes, this film does not only stop at the contradiction between family relations and intergenerational communication, nor does it stop at the choice of life and the reinterpretation of success, otherwise I think it may not win the favor of so many people.

The reason why Jobu has become a representative of evil forces is precisely because of the nihilism in the human heart. As a mother, Evelyn needs to save her daughter from this nihilism. Not only that, she also needs to solve a mess of herself.

Speaking of "nothingness", we have to mention Sartre's existential philosophy: Existence precedes essence. (Existence precedes essence.)

Existentialism is the philosophy that is most concerned with the human condition in the world. It is fundamentally different from the cold logical deduction of analytical philosophy. As Sartre said, "Existentialism is a Humanism".

He believes that human consciousness itself is nothing, and only when something is filled in can people gain their own essence. Therefore, human beings do not have any predetermined essence. Human existence is nothingness (the unity of man and nature), and its essence is "to be formed".

Existence precedes essence, there is existence of nothingness, and then we have to find our essence.

So how to get the essence?

Man is an existence for himself, constantly searching for the essence for himself and constantly changing. In other words, man is never "being" anything, but is always "being" something.

In this sense, man is free. This freedom is not based on strong ability, but on human existence, on the most fundamental nothingness.

But it is precisely because human existence itself has no meaning. As a person of "existence", the biggest enemy facing it is "nothingness". After recognizing the meaninglessness of existence itself, people reshape and create themselves. Constantly choose to find meaning.

However, free choice also has a price, no one can take this responsibility, you have made a choice, you have to bear the responsibility alone.

All your choices are based on yourself. After "God is dead", there is no objective and absolute universal standard, and there is no external standard for man to rely on. So, not only do you have to make a choice, you have to set the criteria for that choice for yourself.

Every decision we make changes our lives, but the collapse of meaning is precisely the collapse of choice.

As an Asian who grew up in the United States, her daughter's nihility and pain seem to be related to the separation of her mother's relationship and the repression of the East Asian family environment, but it is precisely because her individual identity is restricted that her free will is confiscated.

When a mother faces a daughter who is in the state of a demon king, she does not think it is her own daughter, but thinks that an evil spirit occupies her daughter's body. She is unwilling to accept the fact that the "blackened" daughter is her own daughter. To respectful love, then it is bound to accelerate toward destruction.

In other words, the existentialist solution is to constantly "create yourself", to realize that the meaning of your life is to be fulfilled in choice and to be found in constant "becoming", which is why Evelyn has to experience so many universes and feelings How would my life be different if I had made other choices in the first place?

When you penetrate everything, discover the insignificance and stupidity of human beings, and feel the emptiness of life, then what is the meaning of existence? It is better to destroy and return to the original state. And here comes the film's most interesting silent dialogue:

We are small and stupid, but it is precisely because of our existence, experience, and experience that we have meaning, so every choice we make is to define the meaning of our life.

In the end, what is the antidote that can save "nothingness"?

At the end of the film, Evelyn had an epiphany when she saw her husband treat others in his own way, unconditionally tolerant and loving himself. An eye grew out of her forehead, and although this way of presenting the troubled hole is absurd, this third eye can gain insight into everyone's life.

In the process of "fighting", she did not use brutal force to eliminate the enemies in front of her, but treated them in the way of "I see you". Including the SM part, although many people will find it vulgar and disgusting, it is precisely this unknown and shameful heart that was "seen" and "accepted" at that moment, which really surprised me. .

Facing her daughter, she no longer expresses her love with a controlling desire, but respects her choice. This is similar to psychological healing, "I see you", I feel your feelings, and I empathize with your mental journey.

You can choose to roll down the hill, you can choose to jump into the bagel's black hole and let yourself be swallowed, but as a mother, I empathize with your feelings and pain, but I also need to express my feelings for you, I can't Watching you go to nothingness, so I want to slide down the hill with you, I want to jump into a black hole with you, no matter what kind of person you become, whether you succeed or not, I don't care, I just know that I will tolerate you , accept you, love you, and accompany you.

Evelyn has experienced countless universes and felt the emptiness and pain of life, but in the end she also understood that life needs to be tolerant and kind in life, and to accept and love everyone with compassion.

So far, this film has not only stayed on the theme of resolving conflicts in family relationships and maternal love. I think that the way to fight against "nothingness" and support myself to find the meaning of existence are all hidden in those trivial but easily overlooked daily life.

Staring at each other, seeing each other, respecting each other, accepting each other, loving specific people, maintaining good intentions, looking at people and things around them with a positive attitude and beautiful thoughts, this is the meaning of existence.

Not for fame and fortune, not for fame, not for wealth, not for being a good person, when I can see you and you can see me, we understand, respect, and empathize with each other, and our communication does not need to be for the sake of subjectivity. struggle, then existence is meaningful.

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