I Contain Multitudes

Post By

TJ

There’s a line from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself that has lingered in my mind since I saw the movie Life of Chuck—

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

At first, it felt vague, overly grand—almost too poetic to be real. But now, as I sit in my little apartment in Barrie with the sound of the evening rain tapping gently on the windows, this line holds an entirely different weight. It feels like it was written for me. Like it is me. I heard this line in The Life of Chuck, a short film based on a story by Stephen King. It’s a strange and beautiful narrative told in reverse—a man’s life unwinding from death to childhood. In one scene, that same Whitman quote is painted on a wall: I contain multitudes. It caught me off guard. 

There are days I feel like different people are living inside me. There’s the lonely, quiet boy from Mumbai who used to spend hours staring at the stars, never quite fitting in, never quite being seen. There’s the wide-eyed dreamer who left India in search of something more—more space, more meaning, more air to breathe. There’s the anxious, open-hearted man I’ve become in Canada who overshares at coffee shops, who writes blog posts no one may read, who bikes in the rain and cries to old Hindi songs and French love ballads. There’s the scientist in me, who still believes in equations and reason, and the romantic who still believes in serendipity. I’ve tried to fit into labels, to be one thing. A software developer. A library worker. A data scientist. A friend. A good son. A curious mind. But life, as Whitman and Chuck reminded me, isn’t about being just one thing. It’s about being. Period.

Being present.

That film, The Life of Chuck, with all its reversals and quiet heartbreak, reminded me of something vital—that we are not the sum of our achievements or failures, not defined by the job we didn’t get, or the love that didn’t stay, or the country that sometimes makes us feel invisible. We are defined by the dance we do in the kitchen when no one is watching, the conversations we have with strangers on rainy days, the stories we choose to remember, and the small kindnesses we give even when our heart is breaking.

I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, I contain multitudes.
And so do you.

It’s okay to contradict myself. It’s okay to be both strong and fragile, logical and lost, full of hope and drenched in sadness. I am not broken for being all these things. I am whole because of them. So today, I sit with all my selves. I let the rain fall. I drink my chai slowly. I breathe in the moment—not to escape it, not to judge it, but to simply be in it.

Because life, in all its chaotic poetry, is always unfolding. And in this messy, beautiful unfolding—I find myself. Again and again.

And that’s enough.

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I Contain Multitudes