Have We Met Before?
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I took myself to the movies recently to see Past Lives.
Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora's family emigrates from South Korea. Decades later, they are reunited for one fateful week as they confront destiny, love and the choices that make a life.
**(Warning, this newsletter contains spoilers for the movie! Which you should go see because it’s very good. But even if you get some of it spoiled…it’s still worth seeing.)**
Hae Sung claims to be visiting New York for vacation, but Nora soon figures out that he’s there to see her. Nora and Hae Sung haven’t seen each other in 24 years. They’re practically strangers to one another, and yet some tether still connects them: inyun, fate, kismet.
The night before Hae Sung leaves, he sits at a bar with Nora and Nora’s husband. Hae Sung’s English isn’t very good, but neither is Arthur’s Korean. Nora attempts to translate some semblance of a conversation between the three of them, but their conversation feels stilted and things keep getting lost in translation. Eventually Nora and Hae Sung begin speaking in Korean, excluding Arthur.
Their conversation is emotionally charged, but there are no tears or pleas to run away together. They speak slowly, quietly, calmly. Their conversation aches from all the things they cannot say to one another.
“If you had never left Seoul, would I have looked for you? Would we have dated? Broken up? Gotten married? Would we have had kids together?”
It feels less like Hae Sung is asking Nora than it is that he’s asking the universe. They both understand that in this life, this is what they have. But what if things had been different? Maybe there is a life where they do end up together. Maybe several. Maybe in every other life they end up together, but they are not living in any of those other realities.
Sometimes when I meet a client who I really get along with, I wonder if we met in a past life. Maybe you were my boss, and even if there was no torrid, HR-violating affair, we still sometimes held each other’s gaze for longer than felt comfortable. Maybe I taught one of your classes in grad school and you would always make time to come to my office hours even though you knew my husband also worked in the same department. Maybe I was a barista at the coffeeshop you visited every morning. Maybe you were the UPS driver who delivered along my route. Maybe we were lovers. Maybe we were enemies. Maybe I annoyed you. Maybe you annoyed me. Maybe we were childhood friends like Nora and Hae Sung. Maybe we just stood next to one another in line at the deli and made small talk once. Maybe we bumped into one another on the street some random Thursday, locked eyes, and…that’s it.
I try not to let my fantasy get the best of me. Because I live in this reality, the one where I get to spend time with you as we both are. It’s not perfect, but I can’t imagine any version of life that is. And if all I know is this present version of this life with this version of us, well, I still consider myself very, very lucky.