Wed 25 May 2005 @20:08
It’s often easy, if frightening, to see how big decisions can change our lives. Moving to a new home, changing jobs, beginning or ending a relationship — all those loom large in front of us at times and may cause a lot of stress as we anticipate them. They are milestones by which we plot the course of our lives. When I was 25 I moved 900 miles away from everything and everyone I had known my entire life. Making a life for myself in this new place was devastatingly difficult and clearly effects me even now.
It occurs to me though that the millions of smaller and seemingly inconsequential choices may have a larger cumulative effect. There is a movie from a few years ago that I think illustrates very well the consequences of seemingly small changes. The film is Sliding Doors and stars Gwyneth Paltrow. In it, Paltrow plays two versions of her character, Helen. Early in the film we see Helen catching a train to go home — and not catching that train by just a few seconds, and we pass back and forth between two paths where her life diverges at that point.
There was no big, agonizing decision to make the difference. Some reviewers even referred to the staging of the divergence as clumsy. But her two selves are very different and, for the most part I think, equally plausible. I know that my life would be very different if I had stayed in Kentucky instead of moving to Florida. I would be very different. Some days, like today, I wonder how different I would be if I had left work five seconds earlier or later. I’ve read a theory that there are infinite multiple universes so that everything that possibly can happen DOES happen… somewhere. That’s no consolation for having to live in THIS universe though.
May 26th, 2005 at 00:02
True, but by the same logic, isn’t it amazing how in those parallel universes all kinds of possibilities exist? For example–perhaps you affect someone (and don’t even know it) every day. Perhaps moving from Kentucky to Florida opened you up for a possibility that hasn’t even come to you yet. Each day is a new slate, and as we all move around in our discrete bubbles, often failing utterly to connect, each life can inadvertantly yet significantly affect another through intention, circumstance, or happenstance. Five seconds or nanoseconds can make a difference–get on the interstate at the right time, avoid a collision–but so can saying one thing to one person at exactly the right (or wrong) moment.
I loved that movie, if only for the concept behind it.
And moving 900 miles takes a tremendous amount of courage. Many people live within ten miles of their birth all of their lives, for fear of the unknown. You struck out independently, and although you seem to indicate regret over it, hasn’t it shaped you into who you are today? And I think your readers would agree that who you are today is pretty darned okay.
Hope that’s not too cheesey or intrusive. I’m feeling sentimental this evening.
May 26th, 2005 at 01:32
Loved that movie..and now I’m also in a sentimental mood.
May 26th, 2005 at 16:20
It’d be so nice to peak in on those alternate universes, but I have this feeling that some of them are fabulously better than this one, though in the same breath I am sure that some of them are terribly worse. It’s interesting about the way little things can affect entire existences.
May 26th, 2005 at 16:52
That’s actually a great movie, and I’ve often thought the same thing in things from the past and how they might’ve changed who I am today — whether it be fate such as missing a train or a conscious decision.
May 27th, 2005 at 11:39
I’ve got one of those parallel universes I wonder about. It involves this woman.
And Sliding Doors was a GREAT movie.
May 27th, 2005 at 14:05
I think about that stuff a lot too. Like when there’s a big wreck and if you had left the house 5 seconds earlier, you’d be part of it? It’s CRAZY.
May 31st, 2005 at 09:58
I love that movie so much I own it. I don’t often think about those things in such detail…I guess I just live my life and try not to second-guess my path too much. Though I often wonder about this one split-second rash decision that ultimately reshaped my life and sent me across the country twice: when I met my ex, I didn’t think I was attracted to him right off (first impression) and I was going to give him a wrong phone number when he asked. I know, I know, I was immature . But I opened my mouth and what came out was…my right phone number. We eventually got married. He was in the Army and we moved, moved, moved. Then divorced three years later. I often wonder what would have happened had I followed my initial instinct. Would I have stayed in Seattle? Who would I be with? I opened my mouth and gave eight digits and my life changed. It ultimately brought pain to not just the two of us, but to our families, our friends. Yet I think also that the pain and wrong decisions have shaped me and continue to shape me now into the person I am and I am really starting to like that person.