Do you ever feel the weight of all the choices you didn’t make? All the lives you didn’t lead?
Some people believe in a multiverse theory- the idea (in simplest form) that there are other universes where the choices that you didn’t take are lived out. I think the main benefit of this concept is having somewhere to put the weight.
I don’t ascribe to this theory- I feel the palpable opposite.
All those untaken choices, all those unlived lives – they are here in the room with me now.
I wonder if there was a better path, if one innocuous decision might have had better flow-on effects.
You see, in a less than a month, I am moving to France for about 8 months to teach English, through a Language Assistant program. I learnt about that program because I took a class called “Strategies of Language Learning.” I took that class because it was a compulsory core topic in the degree I am in the process of getting. I was meant to be taking French classes, but the class timetables did not work with my and my sister’s (who I take the class with) schedule, so we took this other topic instead. I am only doing the uni degree because my sister suggested it- we use learning a language together as time to catch up, though we have taken a free online course together before for the same reason. I probably would have paid for language classes in the city somewhere, but she wanted to do the degree so it wouldn’t cost anything out of pocket to begin.
We were originally going to take Spanish classes – I took Spanish in school and loved it, and she has studied it briefly before as well – but we switched to French because that is the language taught where my nephew is enrolled, and the degree we are undertaking should result in us learning three languages by the end of it. I had never studied French for a minute before our decision to take these classes (though I always thought I would adopt it as my third language).
And now, I am going to France.
Can you see how tenuous that chain of events is? So many little links that could have snapped or twisted at any time. My nephew could have been enrolled in a different school, or had more than one language option. The university could have assigned the rooms differently, changing the class times so I never would have taken that core topic so soon. My sister could have agreed to take paid Spanish or Arabic classes somewhere in the city.
I could have said that I didn’t want to switch from Spanish. I could have said that my job was kicking my butt and I was way too tired to take on anything else. I could have said I was still too over learning to consider going back again for more study.
It could have been different. Every moment, every choice, every chance – it locks in the road you travel. I could have been someone slightly different, with a slightly different parallel life – I could also have been completely unrecognisable.
But here’s what I always come back to with multiverse theory: Are you even you if you don’t make the choices you make?
Maybe somewhere out there on some plane of existence we can’t reach, there is someone with my name, living a life a lot like mine, surrounded by a lot of people quite similar to the people that I surround myself with now. But she would not be me.
Every choice, chance, moment has built me.
I am the me who is excited about languages. I am the me who loved Spanish classes, but who loves my sister and my nephew more. I am the me who hesitated to cut my paid working hours in order to keep going with the classes I delighted in, and ultimately the me who eventually did it, for so many reasons. I am the me who gave learning another chance and found myself refreshed. I am the me who could have been teaching English for years now, since I first got qualified – but instead chose something that seemed safer and stable and good. The me that had to learn that maybe safe and stable weren’t everything, the me who had to discover ultimately which priorities would win out within me.
I am the me who knows she can spend large swathes of time alone and be okay with it, the me who knows I can solo travel just fine. I am the me who choose this program even knowing how much it would stress me out, how much I would worry. The me who has chosen it knowing it might not be okay, that every last second could go wrong – and the me who knows that the statistics on that are rather unlikely.
Here’s the thing: I could have become someone else.
Here’s the other thing: I am becoming someone else.
Every tiny piece of my life keeps building me into someone new. When the choices come up, I make my choices as best I can, with what I know at the time. The decision could be different but all the history, all those other pieces, have built me into this moment, so I make my choice and it is mine.
I feel the weight of the roads not taken swirling around me. I acknowledge that there were many viable options. And I release myself from the burden of trying to be all things.
I step forward into what I am building, to live the only life I can.
