Another World, A Better World

[Disclaimer: spoilers for the film "Cloud Atlas," The Dark Tower book series, and the television series "Lost."]

I've been very open about my not having a religion, never quite fitting the system of any existing organized beliefs group. My one true and honest belief in this world is that believing something does not make it right or so, but it says everything about who one is as a person. Religion is good when it is used the right way, to cope with the hardships of life and to feel that everything has a purpose. I think that religion's main purpose is to console us from the great mystery at the end of our roads: death. It is the one place we cannot come back from and tell our friends and family about. What is after life?

That is a trailer for one of my favorite films, "Cloud Atlas." I cannot recommend enough that you watch the movie if you haven't, but the trailer sets up what I'm about to say just fine. Throughout the film we are introduced to multiple characters across six different stories. The trick of the film is that the same actors carry over into each others' stories portraying different people. What the film stresses in many of the character cases, though, is that they are the same or similar people each time. Similar traits are exhibited repeatedly by the characters played by Tom Hanks, especially. Whereas the characters of actors Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant are consistently villainous -- in fact becoming less and less human the farther we go into the future of the timeline -- Tom Hanks's characters show a natural and necessary growth. The first chronological story, "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing," has Hanks as Dr. Henry Goose, a thieving and treacherous doctor who slowly poisons Jim Sturgess's Ewing while feigning treatment on him. Goose is after Ewing's gold, and is seen pilfering items off of Ewing's person throughout the process. When next we see Hanks he is a hotel manager who allows Ben Wishaw's character a room if he gives him his decorated vest in exchange. He is seen admiring the buttons of the vest, just as Goose admired and stole the buttons off of Ewing's vest in the previous story. A later segment shows Hanks as an Irish gangster character whose brief scene involves him murdering a literary critic. The final story has Hanks as Zachry, a native man who is a coward, allowing his brother-in-law to be killed by savages when he could have intervened. We still see the temptations of a thief in Zachry throughout the story, but in the end he finds his courage and saves the life of his niece. For the most part, Hanks's character is on a journey of redemption over the course of the film's timeline, constantly being reborn until he can achieve his full and true purpose in the world. The villainous Henry Goose becomes the heroic Zachry in the end.

What the film describes is a belief that every single person in the world has a purpose, a standard to achieve. It just sometimes takes multiple lifetimes to reach that potential. The television series "Lost" touched upon this subject matter with the character of Jacob, an immortal man who uses his mystical powers to guide people of certain character to his island where they are given the chance to redeem any past sins and achieve their true purpose in life. However, Jacob's experiments are constantly foiled by his brother, The Man in Black, who dedicates himself to proving Jacob wrong and that humanity is doomed and people cannot change.
"They come, fight, they destroy, they corrupt. It always ends the same," The Man in Black tells his brother.
Jacob calmly replies, "It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress."
Unlike his brother, Jacob always looks for the best in people. He looks at every failure as progress towards the eventual success.

Stephen King writes on the topic of repeated chances over the course of many lifetimes in his massive fantasy series The Dark Tower. At the end of the final novel, after hero Roland's ka-tet (fellowship) have all been killed or sent away, he finally reaches the giant and omnipotent Dark Tower, to which he had been guided towards his entire life. Upon reaching the top, however, and opening the final door, he is suddenly struck with brief deja vu. He realizes too late that he had reached the tower before, hundreds of times or more, and he is transported through the doorway to where he was at the very start of the series: in the middle of a desert following his foe, The Man in Black (not to be confused with the aforementioned character on "Lost"). Roland has no memories of the adventure we read about over the course of seven books, and he picks up exactly where we started with him. This time, however, he has an item he did not have before: the horn of his childhood friend and fellow gunslinger Cuthbert, lost when the latter was slain in battle. The horn here signifies that Roland has made progress in his ultimate quest, but he still has many more lifetimes to repeat until he does it all right. Every failure or poor choice he makes along the way to the Tower curses him to repeat it all again at the end. We as the readers never learn whether Roland is ever free from this terrible cycle, but by giving Roland his late friend's horn King shows us a glimmer of hope that Roland is on his way.

The belief that we repeat ourselves over and over again across distant lifetimes and even universes is about as close to a religious belief that I get. Life is simply too short to get everything done, too brief to really discover who we are and what we are fully capable of. There is only one true ending ahead of us, one that transcends even death, and I believe that we are slowly but surely working towards it. Only when we do will we find peace and satisfaction in life, and eventually, in death too.

"I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there,"
Tyler