What Would We Learn if We Switched?

Lives with other people, that is.  Do you ever wonder? Do you ever find yourself observing strangers and thinking it's so odd to see all these other humans, so different from each other, going about their lives and knowing nothing about one another?  What if they all had surprising commonalities? How many of them would have deep, dark secrets? Do you ever see someone and just wonder "WHAT are they doing?! Where are they going? What's going on in that head?"


The 2011 movie The Change-Up, for those of you who are Jason Bateman (Arrested Development) and Ryan Reynolds (The Green Lantern) fans, is a cute play on this likely frequently thought-up premise.  And it makes you almost want to experiment (I wonder if people with twin siblings have ever pulled a switcheroo to play a prank on someone or to help one another out).  Just think of all the things you think you know.  Every little detail of your life that is unique to you that a complete stranger would know nothing about.  It's so much more than just your mannerisms and demeanor, but they wouldn't know your routine, they probably wouldn't have the skills to do your job, they wouldn't talk like you or compose emails in your specific syntax.  And if you woke up in someone else's body and had to fake it for a day, do you think you could handle it? Would you freak out or keep your cool? What if you absolutely hated their life and the person they were and you were disgusted by them? What if they were secretly a bad person, maybe even a criminal, and you had the opportunity to tip off the local authorities about them - would you do it? You'd have to come up with a different story, because nobody would believe you were them for a day. 

Of course this is all very far-fetched, but it also calls to mind that show What Would You Do?  There are so many questions that can be raised from imagining things like this and from finding yourself in almost unreal scenarios.  Meeting new people always makes me wonder what we could learn from others if we switched lives for a day.  Other than being incredibly freaked out, I think it would be a humbling experience that would put a lot of things in perspective for many people. 

I enjoy meeting people and learning about them.  I ask lots of questions and really try to visualize their unique experience.  I have a lot of respect for everyone's different backgrounds and talents and it's just so cool to hear about people who are different from you.  I think a lot of times people get so caught up in themselves and their little world with their deadlines and their problems that they forget they're not alone, nor unique.  Yes, we're all different but every life and body comes with a set of stories, issues, tragedies and triumphs.  They might be different, but everyone has experiences.   Don't you ever catch yourself doing something and wondering if you're weird or if other people do it too?  I always wonder if everyone else has so much constant activity in their minds, like rampant thoughts all the time.  I have this ceaseless inner monologue (sometimes it's more like a dialogue - just kidding) and sometimes I feel like I just have a hyperactive mind, or like I'm acutely aware of all these different things and I can juggle all these different trains of thought at once.  I know I'm not alone, but then I see other people who just look so vapid and vacant and I wonder what it must be like to have a quiet mind?  Is anyone ever just thinking about nothing? Not thinking at all while awake? Is that a different state of being? Can you flip it on and off like a switch, and if so, who do I need to talk to about teaching me to master that? 

If you had the ability to switch lives and bodies with someone you barely know, just for one day, would you do it? Or would you be afraid? Would you be able to relinquish control of all the things in your life that are so close to you or would you be afraid they would royally mess it up? Would you be afraid of messing up their situation? Would you try to make it better in some way, if you could?  There's a saying that says "leave everything better than it was when you found it."  Imagine if you could just stumble into someone's life as if time were frozen and tangible and just shift things around and use your resources to help them out. What if you could put money into their bank account or use your connections to get them something they need? On the other hand, what if you found their life so dark and depleted that in one day, it changed you in a haunting way?  What would you learn from that? Would you learn that every little thing you've obsessed over is now pale in contrast and seemingly irrelevant, or would you hold tight to the premise that everyone's unique reality bears the same weight and that no one can be graded for scale and scope of experience?

There's much to be inspired by and to ponder.  The world doesn't revolve around each of us individually.  We all orbit each other.  You can learn beautiful things from people you'd never suspect to have anything to share or contribute on the surface.  But how amazing would it be if, in one instant, you were transformed into a body that was either better than yours or that you hated?  You suddenly had a whole head full of memories that weren't yours, spanning a lifetime you didn't live.  You could suddenly be a lefty instead of right-handed.  What if someone close to the person you switched with was going through a really hard time and you had to be there for them?  You'd have new inside jokes, new connections, new sensations.  What if the new you had post-traumatic stress disorder and you kept getting scary flashbacks and didn't know how to deal with it? What if you had to take necessary medications for a health condition they have just to keep their body alive, but in your reality it was a medication you were allergic to? And how would you balance all the thousands of micro decisions that fill a day if you knew in the back of your mind it was only temporary? Knowing that, would you instead hide out until 24 hours passed, wasting the opportunity to boldly venture out into society, posing as someone else and relearning things native to you? Would you be riveted or cowardly?

You might discover an amazing untapped talent that was never cultivated  in the life you were borrowing.  What if you could help them discover this? Or what if people could steal traits from one another as if we were all machines?  What if you could download and nurture their raw, unused talent or natural athletic ability and in turn leave behind some kind of instinct or strength or intellect to help them get along better? What if you could correct someone's course - and what if someone attempted to correct yours when you didn't want or need to be changed? Could you stop it and redirect or would time have already moved on so quickly that a stranger's edits were already saved and integrated into the fabric of your life?

There are so many moral and ethical questions that arise just from the simple act of pondering the inheritance of a life other than that of our own.  There are billions of people in this world - I'm sure others have thought about this too, in other countries and languages - but as commonplace as it may be I don't think anyone could honestly answer many of these questions unless faced with a similar situation in actuality. 

Technology is growing increasingly unfathomable.  The things we can do these days are astounding.  We're taking trips to the moon now, phones and tablets seem to rule everything, we can track anyone and anything anywhere at any time...it's almost scary.  We've become so reliant on it - kids don't go to libraries anymore to check out encyclopedias for research or use a thesaurus to write - there are websites for that.  Spell Check, AutoCorrect, Wikipedia, and social media are the new reference materials of this generation (and a handicap if you ask me - Spell Check is wrong a lot! It doesn't contextually correct homonyms, for one - i.e. buses/busses).

Anyway, I digress.  I wouldn't be surprised if, one day, almost as if in a science fiction novel, someone comes up with technology to at least simulate the life experience of others.  And if it ever becomes reality, I can only hope that some evil person won't use it as the ultimate act of terror and torture (like turning your life into a movie and removing you from it, putting an incompetent understudy in your place and forcing you to watch helplessly while they stumble through your important presentation, million-dollar deal, interactions with your loved ones, and anything else that would make you cringe).  But instead I'd hope they would use it for good and to teach everyone all the things that they could stand to learn from just being granted the privilege of seeing from behind the eyes of another human being.