A friend of mine was recently telling me how he...

A friend of mine was recently telling me how he never has the chance to see this girl that he knows at school, because when he’s in class she’s free and when he’s free she’s in class. I told him that this was a simple problem of two people existing in the same space but not in the same time. How many times do you think you and she have walked the exact same path in the hall, leaned against the exact same spot on the wall, drank from the same fountain, pushed the same elevator button? He conceded that the above situations had probably occurred quite a bit. Isn’t it comforting to know?

So I was tripping myself out in bed the other night and I started thinking about my seat in one of my anthro classes. I sit in the same one every day, but I wonder how many people sit in that seat per day. Five maybe, and then the next day another five. And how many per year? How many have ever sat in it? How many will ever sit in it?

I sit in a chair, and I occupy the exact same space as everyone who has ever sat there or ever will, and it bothers me that we are connected in such an intimate way but we will never know each other. We can never know each other… maybe. Why is it that two people connected by space but not by time can’t interact? What if time doesn’t really exist as we experience it, what if everyone who has ever sat in that chair and everyone who ever will are really just piled up on top of each other?

That what I have just said is a fact of nature, I believe to be a fundamental flaw with how the universe was constructed.

Jacob Martinez

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