An article reviewing a new book by Caltech professor, Sean Carroll, got me thinking about a topic I suspect many of us have entertained at one time or another. The book, Something Deeply Hidden, explores the concept of a multiverse in which an infinite number of possible versions of us exist. You read that right, although it isn’t something derived from science fiction and fantasy, but rather from observations about quantum mechanics.

While technologists are harnessing quantum physics in a number of ways, not least in the design of so-called quantum computers, physicists have largely exploited quantum mechanics theoretically but, admittedly without a deep understanding of how it actually works. Quantum mechanics plays with our sense of reality. It predicts the existence of particles such as the Higgs Boson and appears to confirm the laws of superposition—in very simple terms the understanding that we can only observe the position of matter in a single place in time, while acknowledging its existence in many possible places all at the same time. The act of observation itself is what freezes matter in one place from our perspective—but the matter itself persists in multiple places –and here is where things really get strange. Each of those intersections is a separate reality, each time we look for the matter we create another intersection.

Think of these intersections as a series of rapidly captured photographs of an event unfolding. In this analogy, those snapshots are not pictures frozen in time but a record of the many versions of the event which have arisen through our interactions. Both the thing we are observing and the observer branch and each go their separate ways, never interacting with one another again. There is no single version of reality but a nearly infinite number.

In principle, accepting this knowledge has little meaning for us. We will never meet those other versions of ourselves—and what happens to them in their own reality is of no consequence to us. They will live and die independent of us. They are powerful and weak, rich and poor, humble and swaggering, cruel and compassionate—potentially everything we might become. So why does this matter to us, if the us we know only exists in this one reality?

In one sense it matters very little, except as a way of understanding that reality is not the fixed thing we have always thought it to be. But for me it underscores an essential point about human existence. Our reality is what we shape through our interactions. Every person we encounter, action we take, feeling we express even thought we allow to flittingly pass through our minds is constantly altering our reality. Yes, it is true that the same goes for everyone else and their interactions with us also create changes in our reality—but, and it’s a big but, how we choose to respond has more to do with the outcome than almost anything else.

Now I could have made this point without the scientific preamble, it is after all an observable fact. But the magnitude of this understanding lends a powerful and immutable energy to the narrative. Every second of every day we are the agents of change. The choices we make will alter our universe and those of other beings that occupy our version of it in countless ways. We can act with intentionality, electing particular responses to the choices we encounter, or react reflexively and without conscious thought. At each moment a new branch is created, only we can decide where ours will lead.

If our universe seems chaotic, confounding and even cruel, it is no less the result of all those choices. We cannot escape the consequences of human action, but we should be mindful that even the tiniest of positive interactions sets in motion a cosmic energy with the power to alter our reality for the better. Nothing, including the failure to act leaves the universe unchanged. We cannot seek refuge in the desire for a kinder reality, it is we who must cause it to exist.