Most nights, as I prepare for sleep, peeling off the layers of the day and thinking back on what has been, I grapple with challenging notions of choice and free will. How much of what I do and sense is because of choices I made? Am I not merely a product of genetics, environment, and social conditioning? Could my day have taken another path?

When I really can’t sleep, I lose myself in complex concepts like darkenergy and multiverse. I wonder to myself: Perhaps I have made every choice, done and sensed every thing, in all places and at all times, but only have the capacity to hold one set of memories and experiences at any one time.

And then I dream, remembering all the lives I’ve lead, all the choices I’ve made, all the things I’ve done and sensed, and it seems so simple until I wake again.