What if every person you have ever met was, in some way, another version of you?
The idea people often call the Egg Theory comes from Andy Weir’s short story The Egg. The basic idea is that we are here to grow and learn as a soul, and that every human life is actually being experienced by the same soul. In that idea, you are still you—but you are also every other person who has ever lived.
That means you would be the person who loved you, the stranger who helped you, and even the bully from high school who made your life harder.
It is a strange concept. I understand it may not be the right belief for everybody, and I am not saying I know it is literally true. What matters to me is what I took away from it.
What I Take From It
The biggest thing the Egg Theory changed for me was the way I think about other people.
What if I started treating everybody like they were another version of me?
I would never intentionally want to hurt myself. I would not want to make my own life harder. If I saw myself struggling, I would hope someone would show a little patience, understanding, or kindness.
So why not try to give that to other people too?
I already believe that we are all connected in some way. Maybe that connection does not work exactly the way it does in The Egg. Maybe we are not literally one soul living every human life. I do not pretend to know that answer.
But I do believe we affect each other. What we say matters. What we do matters. The way we treat people matters.
A Different Way to Look at People
When I look at someone as completely separate from me, it can be easy to judge them. It can be easy to think, “That is their problem,” or to decide who they are without knowing what they have lived through.
But if I stop for a second and think, “What if that person is connected to me? What if, in some way I do not fully understand, they are another version of me?” it changes the way I approach them.
It becomes easier to accept people for who they are.
It becomes easier to go a little farther to help someone.
It becomes easier to remember that I do not know everything they have been through.
And if we really are all connected—or if we somehow are all expressions of the same soul—then helping someone else is also helping yourself.
Even If It Is Only an Idea
I do not think you have to believe the Egg Theory is factual to get something useful from it.
Most of us have heard some version of “treat others the way you want to be treated.” It is an old idea. But for me, it hits a little differently when I think about it this way.
What if the person standing in front of me is not really as separate from me as they seem?
What if every act of kindness I give to someone else is, in some way, an act of kindness toward myself?
And what if every time I choose understanding instead of judgment, I am helping all of us grow a little?
Maybe The Egg is exactly right. Maybe it is not. I do not know.
But I think the lesson is worth carrying with us either way: treat people with the same care you would hope to receive yourself. Because maybe we are more connected than we realize.
And if we are, doing better by each other is also doing better by ourselves.