A recent post by Barbara at http://looking2live.blogspot.com has got me thinking of the serendipitous nature of choice and how one decision can impact or cause a whole series of events.
In my life, certain pivotal moments stand out:
Coming to the city I live in now as opposed to going to university somewhere else; That decision, determined more by parents, is one that on some level, I've always regretted. Being overseas,however, meant choosing from catalogues rather than making an in-person visit. My mother had an aunt here and was under the illusion that her extended family would somehow make a difference. They did not. The life and friendships created were my own. I rarely saw my mother's relations and do not generally hear from them.
Refusing to marry at twenty, a choice I knew would have closed more opportunities than it created.
Realising that my ex-pat experiences profoundly influenced not only my worldview and feelings of not quite fitting in here, but the people I would keep as friends. Several of them are widely travelled, educated and more than monolingual.
A chance meeting at a party led me to the editor of my college daily, and a small clerical job that became a staff writing position. This led me to abandon my original plans to teach. Instead, I became a freelance writer and author. I am working my way back to this since library opportunities are few and far between.
Bouncing back appears to be something I do well, despite hating change. I learn quickly generally, something that has worked in my favour. Life is not for the faint-hearted and I am not among them.
Someone recently said of me that I have no particular reason to be anywhere. This is as frightening as it is exhilerating. If this is true for you, what would you do?
16 comments:
if i had my way i would write....maybe one day....
Brian,
You do write, you've just got to find a publisher.
When I was 14 or so a freshman in hs school my father who was a OhD. in chemical engineering was trying to show me the fundamentals of algebra. That shit made no sense then and makes no sense now. I failed it twice and dropped it 5 times.
He hit me so hard that it knocked me out of the chair and told me I "was to goddamn stupid to go to school so I had better learn how to work."
The next day he had a job for me after school and during summer school in a factory of a friend of his, sweeping floors and cleaning toilets. I was 14 when I started paying taxes and social security.
If I had passed that class i would have graduated in 11th grade and may have gone to college but I was 1/2 credit short. So for 12th grade i went to a new school instead of the one I went to from 1st to 11th grade.
Bad fit. They gave me my half credit in December 71 and asked me to leave because I made a vow to myself no one would ever knock me down again and so far fifty two years later no one has.
Instead while all of the kids my age were trying to find ways to get out of the draft and go to college I enlisted and had a hell of ride on seas most men would weep over. I thought it was great fun. I was discharged three months before I turned 21 and the day I turned 21 i went on the road and didn't come back for longer than two weeks for four years.
If my father had found a way in his own genius level IQ to teach me algebra I may have gone to college. after WWII he went from a HS school diploma to a PhD, including his masters in pharmacology, in just under five years.
Had he not been so vehement I may have played football for the old rah rah team like he wanted but I did neither. I never played any sport and never learned algebra.
I wrote poetry when I was 15 all of which he burned while I was in boot camp and never stopped, and made it to college when I was 46 and quit when I fractured my neck because by then I knew how to learn on my own.
Now I have been published, I publish, and i write and even though for thirty years I never kept a journal again or anything I wrote I have enough poetry, novels, short stories, flash fiction, haiku and essays to fill more than a gigabyte on my hard drive all done within the last 8 years.
If the old man, who passed on to sleep with his ancestors 28 years ago had not knocked me off that chair and said what he did i doubt that i would now at the twilight of my life had lived as i did, how I did and wound up doing the one thing God gave for me to do. Write.
So to my old man, thanks for that last smack down you set my foot on my path to contentment.
Oh yeah I became a Master ASE and State certified auto mechanic and made as much money or more as my advanced degree siblings because I learned how to work two full time jobs for more than a decade.
Yes there are serendipitous moments that set a foot on a path, but the owner of the foot has to decide where it gets placed next.
I am never happier than when I am traveling.
I pack light and keep moving.
You seem to have followed that same philosophy in life.
Do not question it.
X David, NYC
Move on when it seems right...don't keep ignoring the signs that things are not going well where and how you are....I've been happy so far in hopping the next train out...even if it's twenty years between trains.
Couldn't improve on what was written by Fly in the Web.
Ah yes the road not traveled.....we could spend hours there....I don't torture myself with the 'what if' question as I did in my youth -- at the ripe age of 53 I have finally learned how to live in the present and contemplate the future and muse about the past trying to glean wisdom from the choices...sometimes it's hard but we're only human...
I never had a grand plan for my life, I've just drifted from one thing to another on the basis of instinct, current interests, jobs offered me, doing what's also convenient for Jenny, one thing leading to another etc. On the whole it's worked out very well and I have no major regrets about anything. Maybe I have a guardian angel somewhere keeping me on the right track.
How many of us get the chance to live the life we would have dreamt of, imagined... ? Most of us just accept life as it comes. If you have the courage to go your own way ... do it! Even if it leads to regrets later, such regrets are better than the other ones!
me too I think that The fly in the web said it pretty well!
Ah who knows. All our experiences end up being serendipitous. Had I not made the choices I made or had the experiences I've had (unpleasant as well as pleasant) I wouldn't be where i am now. Happy, poor, employed, loved and well, taking some risks that I would never have dreamed of years ago. Yes, I have regrets but they all led me here. I'm glad you're writing again, it's one of my simple pleasures too.
Someone once told me that life is what happens when you're making plans for other things and I think that's true. At some point, you look back and see that all the detours and double-backing you've been through have added up to your life.
Sometimes I wish I'd majored in English and languages right from the start. I didn't want to do that because I liked English and languages and stupidly thought that majoring in them would ruin reading and learning foreign languages for me. So I spent my time pursuing subjects I wasn't half as good at, and that cost me a lot of years. But while majoring in English might have gotten me published earlier, a lot of the weird, fun things I've done would never have happened. I try not to imagine that other, better things would have.
I try not to wonder. Today is what it is. But tomorrow, is another day!
:)
a pivotal moment in my life was moving away from my parents.. I need to be the authority of my life and be secure in my own decisions.. the best choice i ever made
I think it is so true when Adam Lindsay Gordon, the poet wrote "Life is mostly froth and bubble"...as if froth and bubble are unreachable fantasy that floats above. I think in life, we have to sacrifice a few things. I'm finding ways to be practical. A few events happened to me recently made me think about stability and certainty in life. Once you've been shaken to the core, you never see life in the same way again. It's not becoming cynical but more aware of everything around you. Belonging and identity are so important.
PS. I will try and email you at the weekend as I don't use internet at home.
I'm glad I started you down this path of thought. Isn't it funny how we can easily pick out a dozen or fewer pivotal decisions that shaped our lives, when in fact we probably make at least a dozen decisions every day!
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