8: How Everything Everywhere All at Once Rejects Nihilism & Encourages Empathy and Kindness

I left the theater after seeing Everything Everywhere All at Once with the phrase “nothing matters” echoing in my brain— and I felt at peace about it. 

Mundane and common issues such as taxes and laundry are brightened up by the movies sci-fi themes while diving head first into exploring a multiverse, which isn’t actually as fantastical as it seems. We all can’t help but entertain our imaginations and wonder “what if?”. It’s a cruel reality that we don’t get to choose where in the world we are born, what family we are born into, or what opportunities we are handed. But what we can choose, is how to play the divine cards that the world has dealt us. The film explores the idea that if we were given the opportunity to change our life’s path through the multiverse, would we truly choose to escape? Or would we instead be left with a greater appreciation of our present lives that we didn’t have before? 

What We Discuss:
- Struggling with mental health issues due to generational trauma.
- Questioning the notion of nihilism. Does “nothing matter?”
- Is it possible to be optimistically nihilistic? 
- How “Hard Truths” do more to harm than help.

Transcript

0:00 The film takes the concept of what if I made different choices to logical extremes. How we get lost in our mind always dreading and worrying about and longing for possibilities... Fantasizing about what we could be, yet we feel like we are never moving.

0:23 Hello! It's Reese, and I'm SO glad you decided to adventure with me today :) On the adventure with me podcast, and Reese Grey analyzes YouTube channel, we look at creations and experiences in art, media, music ,and even video games to explore exactly why we think the way we think question would we believe and learn something new! Media you consume undoubtedly impacts your life in interactions and doesn't necessarily have to be an inherently good or bad thing.

0:53 So, let's talk about everything everywhere all at once. [It] centers around a husband and a wife a chinese-american family who own a family business, a laundromat that is being audited by the IRS. The story focuses on the mom specifically Evelyn. She's desperately trying to scrounge together the documents to keep the laundromat afloat and trying to keep their business afloat and go on their day-to-day lives and just survive... she ends up being really harsh to her husband Waymond and neglects him emotionally. [She is] frozen in the mundane of everyday life seemingly tethered to a destined reality and slowly growing bitter.

1:38 Because of this, he [Waymond] wants to file for divorce, and he doesn't have the heart to talk to Evelyn as they're both really consumed in the chaos of everyday life. Evelyn and Waymond have one daughter Joy. Who is struggling to gain acceptance from her mom and grandfather because of their daughter joy's sexuality, and their daughter joy has a girlfriend.

2:04 So, these seemingly mundane and common issues in everyday life, are brightened up by movie magic using sci-fi themes, and dips into exploring the multiverse! Which isn't as fantastical as it seems. Most people are just trying their best in everyday life and despite that you can't help but wonder "what if". Evelyn wonders what if she never left her family in china, what if she followed her dreams of being a singer, what if, what if, what if.

They make it interesting, yet still very relatable by guiding us through a world in this multiverse to visualize the multiplicity of our lived experience, and it gives us something to laugh at, while giving us moments to feel and grieve and understand that we don't get to decide what we're given when we're born into life. A lot of people like to believe that we are better than what life gives us, and it's a cruel reality that we don't decide what we're born into, and the movie depicts that by showing that navigation between the multiverse is hinged upon randomness and performing silly, stupid, random acts... like eating lip balm, or accepting an award, or sneezing, or a paper cut.

3:20 These moments and actions affect the course dramatically of your life and the point is that seemingly small or inconsequential decisions can lead to radically different outcomes. Even though that might seem naïve to think that we have less control than we do, and we are makers of our own destiny... we're not tethered to a destiny of course, we can make choices. But those choices have consequences. Ones we don't want, and ones we're looking forward to.

3:56 And we don't have control over that, even though we choose what to do. Each different parallel reality or universe is an embodiment of a fear or a doubt or different force in her life. Evelyn is so obsessed with her escape into an alternate reality that she loses sense of self-worth, believing that her potential was never allowed to flourish, and she loses sight of what she already has, because in the other multiverses she doesn't have her daughter joy and her husband Waymond and there is value in those people that she chose to build her present life with.

4:36 And I think that constant push and focus on survival of the day-to-day and constant need to provide value and hit milestones in life.. and just go go go... I think if a person isn't pulled back, it can lead to your heart growing hardened and cynical. And we can come close to forgetting that everything can have meaning and influence.

5:02 I left the theater with the phrase "nothing matters" echoing in my brain.

Movie Soundbite: "We can do whatever we want, nothing matters."

And I felt at peace about it. Nihilism itself is not the philosophy embraced by the film but kindness in the face of nihilism is. There can be peace and feeling content in your life choices which is really hard when life can feel so mundane and pointless when you just feel like you're working so hard to make it day to day and the rest of your relationships become pretty much transactional.

5:55 They ask the viewer to be more optimistic, it moves away from self-destruction in the face of nihilism, it accepts it.

Movie Soundbite: "You have to be kind, especially when we don't know what's going on."

6:07 If life is going to go on, and life is going to have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are going to be bad ones, even if we make the best decision we can in that moment. Since nothing matters, if all we can do is love and be kind then we should choose to do that. The universe in itself is cold and it's indifferent and the world keeps turning despite the decisions we choose to make. There are no do-overs and life just goes on... there isn't one way to move forward in life. And we're forced to move forward anyway, and we can move forward in bitterness or we can move forward in happiness and kindness.

6:55 It's easy to see why Evelyn is frustrated. After Evelyn is able to see the many ways in that her life can be unfolded through the multiverse are the countless possibilities of who they all could have become, she's met with the reality that, yeah, her life could have been objectively better. She could have been a famous singer a more successful woman overall...but in doing so she wouldn't have her husband and her daughter and that's what she has. So is she going to spend her time daydreaming of the possibilities or is she going to do all she can do to love and cherish the people that are now in her life.

7:36 The multiverse might contain an infinite amount of pain and heartbreak, but it also contains an infinite amount of creativity, passion, beauty, and possible connections. So we comfort ourselves with the phrase "nothing matters" because everything matters. And there are things we control in things we choose and things that just happen to us, and through this lens, cynicism itself gets distilled down into just another choice. It's not naïve or ignorant to choose to value little moments and small acts of kindness in a world where so much can feel insignificant. Choosing to be cruel and choosing not to have any hope has no greater value than opting for being kind and being empathetic.

8:35 And if anything choosing destruction as joy was considering maybe even suicide can accelerate even the destruction of those around you and ultimately yourself if you let the pressure of the everything bagel overwhelm your life. And just saying the everything a bagel is ridiculous, but we understand that concept. And it's what I treasured a lot about the film is its use of absurd comedy.

9:10 They ridiculously show that it literally does not matter who you are and takes it to the extreme. If you have hot dog hands, and you're a lesbian, you're still human you still love and you still hurt and hope and cry. You still feel betrayed and you get to share these beautiful moments where you play piano for the person that you love but with your feet... in another universe! And it's just so complex, and silly, but it's a true metaphor for the ways in which we look at the way others live their life even though it's not harmful to others it's just different and we go "ew". Even though they're simply just doing things that we all do. They're all just simply loving their partners.

10:03 We other-ize, as if they aren't able to live the same lives as we are because they are not like us, and we demonize other lifestyles as gross even though there's no harm in them. But they are doing exactly what everyone else is doing. Loving and hurting and supporting each other.

10:27 In the final montage of the multiple universes, I think in film we're used to seeing what looks like a romanticization of everything that happens to you in life in these feel good movies. But in this multiverse montage, we see the absurdity of what if hot dogs were our hands, and we played piano with our feet. And a universe that were nothing but rocks, and what if raccoons could help our movements and help us cook... Life is stupid. And it's comforting to see life as ridiculous instead of beautiful.

11:05 I think a lot of people who struggle, you know, with depression... that nothing excites them anymore except for these grandiose displays of passion and love that are so rare in life. I think, like joy, everyone reaches a point in their lives where they question the purpose of living. And most people come to realize that there isn't an inherent point or purpose in life. And being faced with the countless possibilities that your life can go through makes reality even more frustrating. And I think for people like joy, who were dealt kind of shitty hand in life... it can lead to a lot of anger, because of how unfair and difficult life can be. And it could make the sadness feel pointless because there's no reward in sadness.

12:01 For me, I think, it's really nice to hear from another person that sometimes bad things that happen to you don't have a purpose and sometimes life is just simply sad. And it's difficult to feel it and be cool with it. But the beautiful thing about aging is that maybe time doesn't really help to heal wounds but time numbs them. And as long as you're going through the steps to heal, it gets better. And for anyone who does need to hear it, and you might not believe that now... I didn't either at one point in my life. But I think this movie works to tell people that, yeah, some people's lives by inherent virtue by this divine hand of cards that we're dealt with in life... sometimes some people's lives aren't going to be as easy or as awesome for one person than another but I think this movie is trying to tell us that each person genuinely has value.

People, as they exist, have genuine inherent value. You, as you exist as you are have value to your friends, and your co-workers, and your neighbors and random people that you meet across your life as a whole. You are deserving to a good life, but you also have the responsibility to treat others with kindness not only should you work to achieve the things that matter, like owning a successful laundromat, but to live a life that values the exploration of figuring out what matters to you. And finding happiness in places where there are none like Waymond putting cute little google eyes on laundry baskets.

13:56 Life has meaning that we give it. And in appreciating those little moments of value where maybe there's not value... it can lead to a sort of peace, but not on its own or else Waymond wouldn't have wanted a divorce. There's a desire that we have to share this whimsical nature of just enjoying life with others. You can live by your own standards of your own life, and it can be a good life. But it's your life, and you choose it. And you want to share that with someone!

14:35 And I think that's what makes relationships so difficult, is because it's so easy for someone to to lose that spark in life. And like Waymond, when he knows that his wife used to have that that spark for life and she loses it, he just wishes that she could find that again. And he--- it's not easy to leave, right? Because it's like you're looking at someone in all of the the memories that you made together and you're begging them to realize what's already inside of them. But you can't force someone to reignite that spark in their own life, they have to light it themselves.

15:12 So this change that Evelyn realizes in the movies this this path to personal betterment, is through a realization that for her daughter, she understands that she can't go on her daughter's journey to acceptance of herself for her. Her mother caused her daughter damage by not treating her with kindness. The act of loving someone and truly accepting them and wanting to come to understand them, it's all we want from each other. And this movie displays that no matter what we choose to become and the choices we make we cannot run away.

15:54 We can admit that nothing matters, but we have to choose how to live with that reality. It's shown in the film as we see Evelyn moving forward through doing little acts of kindness for people around her she's able to reach her daughter from going into the void by literally being kind to others. We don't need to abuse, we don't need hard truths

16:18 Movie Soundbite: "You are getting fat, and you never call me even though we have a family plan. You got a tattoo and i don't care if it's supposed to represent our family you know I hate tattoos!"

16:29 Because many times, hard truths are just cruel statements that we inflict onto others because of what society expects. Our daughters are fat, because we have an unrealistic attachment to body image that we are pushing onto other people that we love, and holding them accountable for that. That's damage. That's hurtful. It's not kindness. She's not being kind or telling a hard truth to her daughter. And instead she's just hurting her and alienating her and pushing her away to be left to the world that teaches her that she already needs to be different.

17:06 Around me I see seemingly silly things that people create for fun. Little ways that people express themselves through art on discord or through music they make themselves on YouTube or through a little dance on TikTok, and through little creative projects that people do it resonates with me.

And I--- I'm proud of the little ways that these people choose to share and make the world a little bit of a brighter place through just being who they are. And I hope, like me, this movie encouraged you to bring a little bit of positivity to the people around you, and live in kindness in the face of nihilism. And I hope that you find the value that you're looking for.

Okay, love you bye <3.