Generally, when I go to the movie theater, my main goal is to be entertained. Rarely does a movie inspire me. Even more rare is when a movie gets me to think profoundly about life, but that is what happened when I watched Everything, Everywhere, All at Once last June. The multifaceted movie has been so impactful that I am still thinking about it now.
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is an absurdist sci-fi comedy-drama that was produced by the Russo Brothers. The protagonist, Evelyn Wong, is played by Michelle Yeoh of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame. Yeoh plays a Chinese-American who is running a failing laundromat and dealing with a marriage nearing divorce and a constantly disapproving father. An inter-dimensional rupture unravels reality, and Yeoh's character has to use her newly founded powers to save the multiverse. The blend between dark humor and light humor led into an overall absurdism that did quite the job clarifying life for me. To be sure, this piece will make more sense if you have seen the film. Even if you have not, I part onto you ten lessons that I learned or had reinforced from watching the film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.
Warning: the following takeaways contain spoilers.
1. Nihilism is not the answer; kindness is. Yes, the world is a dark and cruel place. There is no shortage of injustice, unfairness, or inequality. While some aspects of our world have order and structure, other parts simply do not make sense. Why do good people suffer while there are evil people who thrive? Why do some people die and others live to see another day? I have come to accept a level of absurdism in this world, an absurdism that this embraces in full. The movie presents nihilism as an option vis-à-vis the Everything Bagel. While despair and hopelessness are tempting options, the movie steers us away from that. Even when we do not understand the seeming randomness of the world, kindness can be an anchor of light in a dark world. It is Buddhist thought, amongst other philosophies and religions, that teaches us that kindness and compassion are what make us human.
2. Go with the flow. This is not some hippy-dippy advice; it is a great lesson from the movie. Opening your mind and your heart does wonders. Change is one of the only constants in this world, yet humans have a tendency towards fearing change. Think of a flowing river. Does it make sense to paddle against the current or to go with the current? I cannot begin to tell you the number of times in my personal life where I fought what was going on in my life. It was stressful, it was emotionally exhausting, and it did nothing to improve my situation. You do not have to condone or agree with what is going on, but you can recognize it for what it is and to do so with as few judgments or self-criticisms as possible. That is the idea behind radical acceptance. It means we fight it or get angry less. I am not arguing for passivity, but working with what is. If we want to go in a certain direction in life, we need to know where we are at before we know where we are going. Going with the way the world is (i.e., go with the flow) makes it easier to instill change instead of wishing what was not the case (also see Point #9).
3. We are small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. This is an extension of the first point. The movie makes references to people as "specks of time." Even if seventy or eighty years seems like a long time to us, it is a blink of an eye in a universe that is millions of years old. We are all going to die one day. The universe is going to exist long after we are gone. This also does not factor into whether other planets have life on them or not. We very well might be one planet with sentient life amongst millions. We are small in the grand schemes of the size of the universe and of the existence of time. The only possibility for ultimate reality exists in an infinite being, as is depicted in such monotheistic religions as Judaism and Islam.
I would argue that this was King Solomon's existential angst in the Book of Ecclesiastes. What is commonly translated as vanity in "All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) is the Hebrew word הבל. The word הבל literally means "breath." Life is all too short, much like a breath. King Solomon's gripe was not that there was no meaning, but that life is too short and we do not get to experience ultimate meaning.
4. Do not despair because we can still find personal meaning. King Solomon struggled throughout the Book, but ultimately found meaning in fear of G-d and His commandments (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Even as we go through our own struggles, we need to find our own personal meaning in life. To quote French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre:
5. Our decisions are not as small as they seem. Per the previous point, it might seem like our decisions are insignificant in light of the inevitability of death. However, as we see throughout the movie, what seems like a small decision can have a ripple effect over multiple universes. Our decisions do not have that magnitude of an effect, or at least as far as we are aware. What the movie illustrates is that our decisions have more of an impact that we can imagine.
6. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. Oftentimes on a societal level, love is treated as something corny or schmaltzy to be a part of movies or fairy tales. But Burt Bacharach was right when he said that love is the thing that there is too little of in this world. This movie plays with the idea of conditional acceptance and what relationships would look like if love were less and less conditional. Towards the end, Evelyn says to Deidre that she is not unlovable because "there is always something to love." The movie does not argue that blindly loving everyone will solve everything. That might be because love is complicated and can be messy. It can mean giving the other person space, de-emphasizing yourself, or needing to let go. Nevertheless, there needs to be more love in this world, not less.
7. The role of silliness and optimism. Evelyn Wong's husband, Waymond, put googly eyes on everything he could find. Evelyn found them to be an annoyance, but this was Waymond's small way to encourage humor and happiness in life. Life is far from being sunshine and rainbows. There are plenty of difficult and arduous moments. Waymond's usage of googly eyes is his way of putting amor fati into practice (see Point #9). Waymond's variant in another universe describes his optimism as a way to fight in a world that does not present a bright side. While optimism amplifies joy in good times, it is a strength and coping mechanism in bad times.
8. Do not forget how important relationships are. What is clear at the beginning is that Evelyn has a lot bogging her down. She is so preoccupied that she forgets two of her most important relationships: with her husband and her daughter. Nurturing strong bonds with loved ones is important. The people we share our lives with can enhance our experiences. Also, there is a famous study from Brigham Young University that shows that those who have strong relationships improve their odds of survival by 50 percent at any given time (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).
9. Do not dwell on the past. There is a scene where Evelyn is looking at her alternate selves in other universes...versions that seemed "more successful" than her. She sees rich celebrities in comparison to her life of "laundry and taxes." It is tempting to think the grass is greener on the other side. It is easy to play the game of "coulda, woulda, shoulda." I have been guilty of thinking of what could have been or what "should" have been. As alluring as it is, the past is prologue. We cannot go back and alter the choices we made.
This is where the idea of amor fati comes into play. This Latin phrase meaning "love of fate" conceptually came about the Stoics, but the term itself is associated with philosopher Frederich Nietzsche. The idea of amor fati is not simply to "grin and bear" bad moments, but to love them. It is not about wanting anything to be different, either now or in our past. It is simply loving life for what it is, and that is the movie's advice in response to Evelyn's verse-jumping. We have to make do with what we have and ideally love it for what it is. We do need to reckon with our past and overcome whatever emotional baggage arises, but we are not meant to wallow and ruminate in our past.
10. Who you are or what you did does not automatically determine your future. Evelyn starts off the movie as a woman disgruntled with her work life and her marriage. She ends up developing superpowers and fighting with the goal of saving the multiverse. Our decisions or circumstances can put us on an unhappy path. Nevertheless, we are not determined to stay on that course.
I will end with a classic from Deuteronomy (30:19): "I [G-d] have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life so that you...may live." We do not get to choose all of our circumstances. There are things that happen that are not our fault, but they are our responsibility if we want to be happy. We are not puppets of fate. We do not have to dwell in the past (see previous point). We have the ability and agency to change our course to create a better, happier future for ourselves.
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