A situation recently arose that I, nor anyone I know, has been privy to; at least to my knowledge. We’ve all met a doppelganger; somebody that looks exactly like a person you know regardless that they may have no relation and nothing in common with the acquaintance in question. I, however, have found myself in quite the stickier situation: I’ve glanced at my own doppelganger. As it turns out, this is a traumatic experience without rival. Now I understand why we use a German word for the phenomenon: it is inherently evil.
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1) Disbelief
What did I just see? No, no it can’t be. That can’t be… but is it?
Yes, this mental conversation will be the first thing to deal with in the unfortunate case of meeting your look a like. You will not wish to look at the person; possibly for fear that we are not all the unique little snowflakes they said we were in Kindergarten (this time we equate the German word with lies). You will steal glances, praying to God that the person in question does not look back at you, for if you share eye contact the world may implode. You recall the scene in Back to the Future Part II where Marty Mcfly’s girlfriend sees her future self and you wonder if it applies. It does not. From here, your disbelief fades and a very different emotion takes its place.
2) Anger
How dare he? Suddenly you are filled to the brim with an intensity of anger you’ve never before experienced. This is bullshit man, you say to yourself. I wonder if he gets a lot of women. If somebody is out there looking exactly like me and getting a lot of woman, I will kill somebody. You try to make sense of this anger. There is no way. It is almost supernatural, as if seeing your look-a-like is something that is not supposed to happen in a rational and sane universe. You have the urge to hit him. You wonder if you will feel the pain that he feels, sharing some kind of strange shared pain receptors. You tell yourself this is insane. Then you get angrier. Does he get more women then me? How does he do it?
3) Depression
He gets more women than you. You’ve accepted this as a fact, regardless that you don’t know anything about this man besides his passing resemblance to you. You think it’s sad that somebody identical to you has so much success and actually used their natural talents to their advantage, while you on the other hand just wallow in self-pity. Coincidentally, you pity yourself for wallowing in self-pity. It’s a vicious cycle. Suddenly, you no longer care about women. If this man can exist, how can this be a rational universe? Is there no God? Or is there simply a mold system in place, and it is simply exceedingly rare to find someone cast from the same mold as you? No, none of this makes sense. You search your brain for everything you know about Buddhism. The extent of your knowledge on the subject all seems to pertain to the eating and enjoyment of peaches. This, while a very good thing to know, does not really apply to the situation at hand and you are suddenly a nihilist. Nothing makes sense, so nothing matters. Then, you are suddenly scared shitless.
4) Terror
Maybe he is you. Maybe you are the imposter and have been living somebody else’s life for years. Maybe you are a robot, given the memories of a real man that you were never supposed to meet but, by chance, now stands before you. Maybe you are the same person and are witnessing a glitch in the matrix. Finally, you settle on a clear hypothesis: you have travelled four minutes into the future and are now witnessing your own past - and your own future, kind of. You will experience this moment again in four minutes. But if this hypothesis is correct, why aren’t you telling yourself it? Why aren’t you trying to calm yourself down? The other you, I mean. The one you thought was a doppelganger, and then turned out to be you four minutes in the future, maybe, or a cyborg replicant of a time period in the past when… wait a minute…
5) Confusion
You don’t know where you are. Time seems to have stopped, or is going too fast or too slow or something. You don’t know who you are, but you’ve accepted the fact that this dude in front of you is whom you thought you were, and that’s confusing on its own. Wait, why is he looking at you? Oh God, here it comes: the darkness. You suddenly experience the past five stages simultaneously; you are doubtful of your existence, angry that you can’t remember your name, depressed that Night Court got cancelled, scared that the universe is about to implode and confused as to how this all got started. Then…
6) Relieved
The guy left. Everything is fine. On second thought, he didn’t really look like you at all.
