Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
In recognition of the butterfly effect, I think an interesting alternative to the 'regrets' question is this: if you could see a magical YouTube video that documents your life in an alternate reality where you made a pivotal decision, what fork in the road would you choose as your starting point?
I don't know if it's a good idea to even watch such a magical video, but it would be really interesting. A lot of us, or likely all of us, have made decisions that put our lives on a fundamentally different course compared to making a different choice. It would be weird to see myself with perhaps a different wife (though we've already confirmed that the universe set me on an irreversible course to my current wife) and a different job and maybe kids and living in a different place.
I would be interested in seeing the results of three different forks in the road.
Fork 1. When I was eighteen, I was going to be an architect. No question about it. That was the plan. Then my high school had a career day. I went to the architect's talk, and heard how it was not a great job and it paid low, and all the cool stuff you see about being an architect is fiction. I then went down the hall where an engineer told us how fantastic engineering was and how it paid great, so my plan changed on that day. I'd like to see how my life would have turned out if I had stayed home sick that day in high school.
Fork 2. When I was eighteen, I won a full-ride four-year scholarship to my dream college. I was stoked. I was all in. Then a couple of really bad things happened, and I couldn't go. Both were out of my control, so it really hurt to give that up. I'd be interested in watching the video of my life in a scenario where I was able to do that.
Fork 3. This one is more of a lark because I didn't really consider it seriously. But it would be a great video to watch to see how far off my life path I could have wandered. When I was graduating college, the Navy was hiring engineers to run nuclear reactors on submarines and aircraft carriers, and I found it really intriguing. I didn't have the gumption to do it, but I wonder how my life would have progressed if I had jumped out of my normalcy to do it.
I wouldn't trade any of these alternate lives for my current life, but it would be fun to see how they would have turned out.
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There wasn't one specific fork when I was choosing a college, but that's kind of the issue... got some junk mail, applied to Northwest Missouri State, went there. In-state tuition, close to KC. I guess the fork could be thinking twice about that, even though I never really did.
In college, a buddy of mine got an internship at DisneyWorld along with several other people... I didn't get it and was pretty bitter about it at the time. I don't think life would have turned out better, but it would be interesting to see it play out (my buddy never left Disney; guessing I would have after one summer, since the initial intern was mostly just amusement park labor and had zilch to do with IT.. but who knows, maybe just the name on a resume would have helped, too).
Other interesting forks would be career-related... if I didn't move to Omaha for an IT job or never moved to Arizona. The former was huge jump for my career, but who knows, could have easily landed elsewhere later (and I ended up moving back to KC a couple years later anyway). The Arizona move was kind of on a whim... I imagine the other side of that decision would be someone traveling through time with me in that multiverse and saying "and this is what your life would have looked like" and future self says "oh god no, take me back to Arizona!" and multiverse me is all "what the **** was that?"