We live with countless choices, and sometimes, we regret the choices we’ve made. In society, we meet many people and even judge our family as having good or bad relationships. However, is everything simply a result of our choices? Are relationships that straightforward? 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' shows us the things we missed in many possibilities and the reasons why we must keep living.

 The main characters of this movie are Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat, Waymond Wang, her warmhearted husband, and Joy, who longs for her mother’s recognition. The movie shows a multiverse view where different versions of 'me' exist due to various choices in each moment of life. Evelyn encounters alternate versions of herself across the multiverse and battles with Jobu Tupaki's 'everything bagel' which symbolizes chaos and destruction. By the end of the movie, she reflects on her thinking and realizes the love of her family and the true meaning of life choosing love and kindness instead of violence and conflict.

 In the movie, we can discover the concept of 'optimistic nihilism.' First of all, optimistic nihilism is a philosophical idea that suggests everything in the world is meaningless, so we can do anything. If life is everything we can experience, then nothing else matters, and in the end, we can find our own meaning. It suggests that if the universe has no predetermined purpose, we can simply create our own. We are all parts of the universe, thinking and feeling as beings who create meaning.

 An everything bagel is a bagel with everything on it. It represents Jobu Tupaki’s nihilism, a very dark concept that absorbs everything. She says, 'The result of every possibility and meaning on the bagel, I realized nothing matters.' Desiring everything, she thought, means there is no desire at all. She also asked Evelyn, 'If our life is just a handful of time, then what does it mean?' In response to the question, Evelyn says, 'Then I will cherish that time.' As we can see in the movie, it delivers the message that we can do everything following Jobu Tupaki’s nihilism as freedom, not hopelessness.

 Our society constantly encourages regret. The sense of missing out on a better version of ourselves, the feeling that we could have been someone greater, often leads us to think like Jobu Tupaki – or rather, Joy – in the movie, who believes that dreams and hope are ultimately pointless. Perhaps, accepting that everything is meaningless might feel easier. However, it is because of this that we must view the world through the lens of optimistic nihilism and continue to live, even in chaos.

 "Every failure here branched off into a success for another Evelyn in another life. Most people only have a few significant alternate life paths so close to them. But you, here... you're capable of anything because you're so bad at everything."

82nd Cub Reporter • KIM JI YUL • jiyulkim815@naver.com