Am I in the wrong universe?

Disclaimer: I don’t really believe what I’m about to say below, but it feels like such a plausible explanation that I want to believe it.

The idea of alternate or parallel dimensions is one that has been mined extensively in fiction and has just enough scientific validity to give such stories a patina of believability, even if most don’t really think there’s some version of the world where Nazis won WWII or hyper-intelligent cats displaced humans.

What makes me entertain the notion–even as a mere thought experiment–that I should actually be two parallel dimensions over and not this one?

Logic.

I know humans are emotional and we are often very bad at keeping a handle on our emotions (look at what men with control over weapons do), but we are still very much capable of engaging in logical, rational thought. And yet, it feels to me as if more people now are abandoning logic for emotion or just…nothing. And they either don’t see this, or they don’t care. It drives me batty.

I could list examples I’ve encountered, both trivial and otherwise, but they all point to the same thing: Why is this happening? Why does it often feel like I’m the only “sane” person in any given group? And the idea that I somehow slipped from my reality into another one that is close, but not quite the same, just feels so right.

Maybe I’m too fussy, maybe I expect too much. Maybe I’ve seen too many TV shows or movies where giant-brained aliens are so much smarter and clever than us.

Intellectually, I know the idea that I’m in the wrong universe is far-fetched and a way to derive comfort from a world I seem ill-suited for at the moment. I’ll do my best to hold onto logical and rational thought and hope others will do the same.

But if I wake up tomorrow and have a goatee, pay for things in moonbucks and others around me behave logically, I won’t complain¹.

1. None of this is to say emotion is bad, but when making decisions, you have to understand when it makes sense to let emotion guide you and when logic/rational thought should be used, and it feels like a lot of people I encounter now don’t understand this or consciously work against using logic for whatever reason. ↩︎