Today a friend and I began discussing how the smallest decisions in our lives go on to change the course of our lives completely. At the point of decision making, the difference between the 2 choices may have seemed so very insignificant that you just picked one randomly or you were convinced that a particular path was so much better than the other. Throw in a few years and when you look back you realize that that 1 decision is what defined your life and had you taken the other option, things may have turned out very very different. It is difficult to comprehend that it could've had such a far reaching effect on your life. Sometimes this realization fills you with regret, sometimes you are just glad or thankful that you took a certain decision... and sometimes you just wonder... what if...
Here's an example from my own life (which was in fact what got me thinking about this...). A few years earlier when I was applying for my Masters degree while still in college I picked a bunch of universities and applied and that did not include CMU. Unfortunately things didn't quite turn out the way I had hoped so I started working and applied the next year. During the application process, ties with an old friend/acquaintance were restored and eventually after 5 years that person became my husband. What if I had applied to CMU the previous year? May be I would've met someone else in CMU or later or may be I would've still been single with my parents breathing down my back and asking me to meet prospective grooms... Who knows?
If you believe in fate, perhaps you can argue and say that even if you had taken a different route, you were just destined to be where you are now... that is the paths would have eventually merged. The whole "What's supposed to happen will happen" argument....
So may be, I would've met the same person later... on the other route. After all Silicon Valley is not THAT big, we interned at the same place in consecutive years and we did have common friends... Who knows?
