Do you sometimes feel like a minor miracle has happened somewhere on your previous timeline and it teleported you to another, much more interesting one? I wonder if others also see themselves and their lives that way; I have always felt like a book character to myself.

A few years ago I would have never envisioned my current life in my wildest dreams: pledging my twenties to work towards becoming an astrophysicist, travelling to many places I never thought I would be able to visit, and learning more than I ever thought there was to learn… A few years ago, I thought I’d be married by 24, I thought I’d probably study literature, or maybe engineering, and I thought I’d never leave my home city… That would have definitely been the case, had it not been for extremely tiny details of life, in which I found my cues to set foot into -and later run through- every new adventure life has presented to me. To be clear, I am not claiming to have achieved a lot, rather, I am speaking of fulfillment, and of the calling I have managed to find through utter chaos; the one with which my path has also become eye-openingly unpredictable.

Looking at my initial conditions at birth and even shortly after, it was impossible to tell that I would later take such unusual trajectories in life. I recall being ten and reading through several books from a childrens’ encyclopedia my Father has brought us. Said encyclopedia had a book for everything: celebrations, foods, music, art, animals from all over the world, and much more. I loved all of these books, but I definitely had a favorite one: It was not any of the books about life on Earth, but the one about the sky. I have read that one book over five times. I knew all of the photos and the numbers. Whenever I was bored, I would pick it up and look at photos of planets and nebulae -which were not half as clear or detailed as the ones we have today- and I read about things like other stars and galaxies. The idea of the world being so big made my small heart beat fast and my eyes glow with curiosity. Sure, I was previliged to have access to such a thing, and I realized it. Mind you, however, that this was all before I learned about the internet, which made that book my very personal, and only, astronomical treasure.

However, I have eventually stopped grabbing that book. I remember later studying some lessons in science classes about the different shapes of galaxies, the big bang, and the solar system. However, and as I grew older, everything has passed without me giving it much thought or ever thinking of looking back. To me, studying the universe for a living was such an absurd idea that I never even considered it or believed it was possible.

Much later, at some point that I cannot even remember, I decided that I wanted this and I was going to do it. And then, it was happening. To me, this has been the biggest example that life is in fact either predeterminate to the extent that impossible scenarios would take place just to go from one point to another and fulfill fate’s prophecy, or that we indeed have the freedom to choose what to be- whereas with such freedom absurdity reigns as well. The latter thought often makes me feel like I did a great thing; Like I came from an apple’s seed, but I could become a peach, or even a completely unrelated entity, like a bird or a butterfly… or an astrophysicist, just because I wanted to.

Speaking of butterflies, the entire idea of this piece of writing was either inspired by, or has reminded me of chaotic dynamical systems. A few years ago, I wrote my first code to solve a chaotic system: a three-body problem. I was extremely astonished by how sensitive to initial conditions the final trajectories of the particles were; The tiniest changes would lead to the most dramatic differences… I might often think that I have taken a very unpredictable path, however, I don’t think I can ever predict how things would have gone, had they been slightly different in the smallest of details.

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Image is of the Carina nebula, by the JWST.