Tom Weiser: Alternate Ithaca Tom

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Moth – "Tom Weiser: Alternate Ithaca Tom"

Introduction

In the December 29, 2008 episode of The Moth, storyteller Tom Weiser takes listeners on a profound journey exploring the concept of alternate universes and the impact of life choices. Recorded live at The Moth’s main stage, Tom shares a deeply personal narrative that intertwines quantum physics theories with his own quest for meaning and fulfillment.

Theoretical Foundation: Alternate Universes

Tom begins by grounding his story in the scientific theory of alternate universes. He explains:

"Some scientists say that the universe we inhabit is not the only universe there is... every time a quantum event happens, it produces all of its possible results...splitting the universe into two alternate—the heads universe and the tails universe" ([02:45]).

This concept sets the stage for his personal exploration of divergent life paths.

Personal Journey: Quitting the Corporate Job

At around age 40, Tom faces a pivotal moment in his life. Dissatisfied with his role as a custom database application engineer—a career he stumbled into rather than consciously chose—he decides to pursue a more fulfilling path. Embracing the uncertainty, he makes a bold decision:

"I wanted something more magic. I wanted it to be like the guy in the fairy tale that trades the cow for the magic beans" ([04:30]).

He purchases a Volkswagen van, resigns from his job, and embarks on an eight-month, 25,000-mile road trip across the country with no clear destination, hoping to organically discover his next vocation.

Encounter with Ithaca: Vision of an Alternate Life

During his travels, Tom drives up to Ithaca, New York, a town renowned for its hippie culture and proximity to Cornell University. As he enters the campus, he experiences a vivid vision of an alternate version of himself:

"I was supposed to go to Cornell. If I had gone to Cornell, I would have studied animal behavior. Right now I'd be a professor of evolutionary biology with a wife and two kids" ([07:20]).

This vision represents a life where he made different choices, leading to professional success and personal stability—an idealized version that haunts him.

Struggle with Identity: Present vs. Alternate Self

Back at a Tai Chi camp, Tom mirrors his inner turmoil by taking on the role of the camp’s “singing asshole,” a metaphor for his struggle between embracing his true self and the alluring vision of his alternate life. He reflects:

"Everyone knows what they do. I thought I should, too... Alternate Ithaca Tom made the right choices, but the psychic said if you had become an academic, your wife would have had an affair with your brother or your best friend" ([11:45]).

This revelation underscores the complexity of life choices and the unintended consequences that may follow different paths.

Seeking Answers: Consultation with a Psychic

Feeling overwhelmed, Tom consults a family psychic, hoping to understand the significance of his experiences. The psychic interprets his astrological chart, highlighting a fundamental internal conflict:

"Saturn in the midheaven marks you as a person who could be very organizational... On the other hand, Pisces and the sun, they're squared with each other. Piscean, the dreamer, the mystic" ([12:30]).

The psychic suggests that Tom is torn between two identities—the structured, corporate individual and the free-spirited dreamer—emphasizing the need to choose between them.

Climactic Realization: Acceptance of Self

Tom concludes his story with a haunting realization that the alternate version of himself symbolizes unresolved desires and the consequences of choices made. The vision of "Alternate Ithaca Tom" serves as a constant reminder of what could have been, challenging him to reconcile his present identity with his aspirations.

Conclusion: Embracing the Present

Tom Weiser’s story is a poignant exploration of identity, choice, and the elusive search for fulfillment. By intertwining theoretical concepts with personal experience, he invites listeners to reflect on their own life paths and the invisible threads that connect their choices to alternate realities.

Notable Quotes

• Quantum Beginnings: “Every time a quantum event happens, it produces all of its possible results...splitting the universe into two alternate—the heads universe and the tails universe” ([02:45]).

• Seeking Magic: “I wanted something more magic. I wanted it to be like the guy in the fairy tale that trades the cow for the magic beans” ([04:30]).

• Alternate Vision: “If I had gone to Cornell, I would have studied animal behavior. Right now I'd be a professor of evolutionary biology with a wife and two kids” ([07:20]).

• Astrological Conflict: “Saturn in the midheaven marks you as a person who could be very organizational...Piscean, the dreamer, the mystic” ([12:30]).

Final Thoughts

Tom Weiser’s narrative skillfully blends scientific theory with personal introspection, offering a rich and engaging story that resonates with anyone grappling with life's big choices. His ability to articulate the tension between different life paths provides a compelling reflection on the nature of identity and destiny.

Transcript

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[Dan Kennedy]

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. The Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories on the Moth Podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York and Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org the story you're about to hear by Tom Weiser was recorded live at the Moth main stage.

[Tom Weiser]

There are some scientists who who say that the universe that we inhabit is not the only universe there is. There are alternate universes. They say that these universes arise from the subatomic realm of quantum physics. Here's how they say it works every Time a quantum event happens, it produces all of its possible results. This is like saying if you flip a coin, it comes up heads, but it also comes up tails. Since those two results are mutually exclusive, the flipping of the coin splits the universe into two alternate the heads universe and the tails universe. And since quantum events are happening all the time, it means that alternate universes are bubbling up continually. They're always being created, splitting off from ours. And these alternate universes are real. They're not just figments of the imagination. They're complete, whole real things. I know this is true because I experienced an alternate universe. I was driving in my Volkswagen van up to a tai chi camp in upstate New York a couple of summers ago. I bought the Volkswagen van when I'd quit my job a few years previously. I bought the van because I quit the job as a custom database application engineer. This was not a job that I really had intended to become when I was a kid. That's not what I thought I was going to be. It's just sort of the job I happened into. And I always thought of it as the work I was doing before I was going to find my real work. But when I got close to about 40, I suddenly thought, oh, my God, this could be it. This could be what I end up doing. This could be on my tombstone. Tom Weiser, custom database application engineer, wrote, well, optimized queries, many customers satisfied. And I thought, no, that can't be it. That can't be all there is. And I quit the job without really knowing what I was going to do next. And I knew that what I should do was to take my skill set and to make a lateral move to a career path that was more appropriate. But I really didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be so logical. I actually wanted something more magic. I want it to be like the guy in the fairy tale that trades the cow for the magic beans. And I know that that's a bad deal. I know that the cow's a better investment. The cow's gonna pay off in the long term. But if the magic beans work out, you're in a whole new story. So I quit the job and I bought a Volkswagen pop top camper van, and I drove around country. And what I thought is, okay, I'm not going to make a lateral move. I am going to drive around the country and I'm going to open myself up to whatever may come. And then what I'm going to do is going to arise organically. I'm Going to find my next path there by the side of the road in Arizona. I'm going to pick it up and bring it back to New York. So I drove around the country 25,000 miles, eight months. And when I got back to New York, I had no clue. I really didn't know. And it left me very vulnerable to the New York question, the first question anybody asked, which is, so, what do you do? I didn't know. I didn't have a good answer. And it made me feel really embarrassed because everybody knows what they do. Everybody does. And I thought I should, too. So when I was driving the Volkswagen van up to Tai chi camp the other summer, I felt very relieved because in camp, I know what I do. I do the camp thing. I do what's at camp. And I don't know if you know this, but there are a lot of camps for adults that are out there. I found them when I was driving around the country. There are tai chi camps and yoga camps and bird watching camps. There's even a camp where you can dress up in armor and joust. All the things that give us joy and that we tend to demean with the name hobby. Those are the things that are celebrated in camp. And when people go to camp, they are so lit up, they are finally getting to do that thing, the thing they love. It's like, yes, I finally get to joust. I don't have time for that anymore, really. So I was going up to camp and feeling pretty good about it, and I decided on the way I would stop into Ithaca. I heard that it was kind of a neat town. So I pulled off the highway into Ithaca. And it's on the southern shore of Lake Cayuga. There's flat land and these hills, and it has a very particular microclimate there which allows hippies to survive. All the stores have names like It Takes a Village or Hemp Unlimited. And the children are all completely multi ethnic and only wear cloth organic diapers. It was really something. I drove around sort of like Disney hippie land, just watching it. And then I. I drove up the hill up toward Cornell, which has these stately buildings on the hilltop. And as I drove onto the campus, I had this stabbing sensation. And I suddenly was pierced with a vision of an alternate universe, my alternate life. I thought, oh, my God, I was supposed to go to Cornell. If I had gone to Cornell, I would have studied animal behavior. And right now I'd be a professor of evolutionary biology. I'm a professor of evolutionary biology and I've got A wife. She's got dark hair, she's really smart. And I'm a professor with a wife and we've got two kids. They like to sing. It was this completely realized vision of this alternate life. And it looked so good. Alternate Ithaca Tom. He'd made these great choices. It was really working out. And I drove around in a kind of awash of nostalgia for this life that I hadn't had. Wow, there's the Human Ecology Center. I did all my grad work there. And there was this funky cottage that I used to live in when I had six roommates. And we had a chore wheel and ate brown rice. And there was these gorges that we used to do drum circles in and songs to the goddess. And it was. And there was this woman that looked just like my wife would have looked when I would have met her. I was overwhelmed by it. I couldn't stand to stay there any longer. I drove off the campus. I fled Ithaca and flew to tai chi camp. But alternate Ithaca Tom came with me. Now, at camps, I tend to really have a good time. I laugh a lot, I joke a lot. Especially in tai chi camp where the residents are kind of serious and slow moving. I can't help but kind of tease them. And in this particular camp, the teacher said that we were going to be meditating every morning from 7 to 8. And she was looking for a volunteer, someone, a musician that would wander the hallways playing an instrument or singing to wake up the residents. I'm not a morning person. And so I thought, oh, so I have a choice here. Either it's going to be 6:30, I'll be lying in my bed really grumpy while some asshole sings outside my door. Or I could be the singing asshole. For the rest of that week, I was the singing asshole of the camp. Every morning I would roam the halls singing lustily, waking up all my fellow Tai chi players. And the people there saw me laughing and singing and they said, tom, it's really great to have you here. You're so happy. You're such a happy guy. And I thought, yeah, you think I'm happy? But you haven't seen alternate Ithaca Tom. I've seen him. He's happy. And the fact that he was so much happier than me was making me miserable. And I kept looking at everybody else's life and comparing myself to them. I remember having lunch with a woman who was in her 60s and she was a calligrapher and she was about to have her first grandchild. She was really excited and I thought maybe calligraphy, that could be it. And then there was this other guy, and he had studied tai chi when he was in his 20s, and now he was a sales rep at dad Dell. And I thought, damn it, if I had studied tai chi in my 20s, maybe I could be a sales rep at Dell. Now. I've never wanted to be a sales rep, but I was just getting carried away. That feeling that I was in the wrong life, I was in the wrong place. I couldn't shake it. I really tried to absorb the lesson of tai chi, which is to be present, just relax, accept what's coming to you, and be present here. But I thought, yeah, yeah, that would be easy. It's so much easier to accept where you are, if only you're in the right place. Eventually, camp was over and I left. I drove back to New York, and as I was driving over the George Washington Bridge, I could still hear alternate Ithaca Tom. He was hanging around me, haunting me like a ghost. And I thought, oh, God, I need professional help. So I made an appointment with the family psychic. This is the guy that's done readings for all of my siblings and my cousins. And I went to see him. And he's an astrologer, so he did out my chart. And this time he was very interested in this polarity that he saw. He said, you have Saturn in the midheaven, and this marks you as a person who could be very organizational. The organizational man, the hierarchical one, the corporate guy, the dad, the provider. Not particularly sexy, but a straight up guy. On the other hand, there's Pisces and the sun, and there they're squared with each other. You can't resolve them. Piscean, the dreamer, the mystic, the guy that's the artist. Never quite pinned down, never quite in a relationship. And you have to balance these two. You have to choose one or the other. And normally I love to hear this kind of thing. This is the great thing about going to a psychic, is that for an hour they just talk about me. It's so interesting. But this time I was. I was so caught up with alternate Ithaca time, I couldn't really appreciate it all. So I just blurted out what had happened to me. And I asked him, what does this mean? And the psychic said, wow, this represents a fundamental choice that you've made in your life. You could have been the hierarchical guy, but you chose to be the Piscean. If you had decided to be an academic, you would have been very successful. There's no doubt that the university structure would have raised you up, you probably would be married, have kids. And I thought, oh shit. Alternate Iphicatam made the right choices, but the psychic said if you had become an academic, your wife would have had an affair with your brother or your best friend. Alternate Ithaca Tom is crushed. He's just found out that his wife is having an affair with his research partner. This is the guy he's been working with for 15 years. It's a long term affair. They're moving in together, she's taking the kids. He's completely crushed. Poor alternate Ithaca Tom. He starts drinking, he can't keep his lecture notes together, he can't keep his research together. He's coming up for tenure and it's all falling apart. And in the midst of his turmoil, he's suddenly pierced by this vision of himself driving a Volkswagen van. He's off to camp. It's a Tai Chi camp. He's not married, he doesn't have kids, he doesn't even have a job. He's completely free. It looks so good, this image. It pierces him to his heart, begins to hang around him and haunt him like a hungry ghost.

[Dan Kennedy]

Tom Weiser lives in a Buddhist household in Boulder, Colorado where he practices Tai Chi and meditation and teaches Alexander technique and improvisational singing. His essays have been featured on NPR and in Newsweek. The Moth is a non profit organization. Consider supporting our free podcast by going to our podcast contribution page or by becoming a moth [e-mail] this holiday season. Give the gift of the Moth. We have T shirts, CD compilations of favorite Moth stories, including today's story which is featured on Audience Favorites Volume 1. Visit our website themoth.org, where you can learn more about the Moths upcoming shows and our corporate events and training program. And please tell us what you thought of today's episode. Tell us what you think of the Moth podcast in general. What do you love? What do you hate? What would you like to hear more of or less of? Email [e-mail] thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you'll have a story worthy week. Podcast audio production by Paul Ruest at the Argo.