Choices

This is slightly more personal than my other stuff, and up here solely for the sake of posterity, and perhaps as a caution against the twin evils of indecisiveness and impulsiveness that so love to plague me.

So I've spoken about how I live in a state of constant indecisiveness, and that is more true than you can imagine. Constraint of time is the only thing that makes me hurry up and make a choice, which, like everything else I do, I make at the last possible minute.This is true of pretty much every choice I've made till date, whether I'm deciding what to order at a restaurant..or what career to pursue.

This story is about the latter.

So, rewind a bit in my life. It's time to pick a college/university/whatever you refer to them as. I'll stick to college. I'm eligible for two equally brilliant ones, and it's time to make a choice, that much detested thing. One of these colleges is what I specifically prepared for, and far beyond what I'd ever hoped to reach. The other offers me the course which I love. Why was I preparing for a course different from what I love? Well I prepared for both, but my focus was on one. There was a choice involved there, too, another one-foolishly-taken at the last moment, but let's just say that reason led to this one. The whole brain v. heart conundrum again. This one had better prospects, and I liked it well enough; that one was the eternal love and passion of my life. If I was to pick the first, I had to start preparing, and soon, and so I began, without quite realizing that this was one in a line of choices that would determine the course of my life. Without thinking about what I was losing. I had been slightly hesitant, and thought I'd leave myself open to both my options, what I liked and what I loved, and pick depending on where I got in-thought that I would decide later when, if I got in.

That first step in the sea swept me away though. The fact that I had a goal in mind,  something to work at; the fact that I invested so much in preparing, all sort of cemented this option in my mind, automatically relegated the second option, what I loved, to second place. A back up, a second choice. I'd dreamed about making it to a certain place: never did I dream of getting accepted to a better place. When that happened, everyone, everyone was overjoyed. Except me: I was still in shock I think. I don't remember much, but I distinctly remember that I wasn't..happy. Just numb. I had found out earlier that I might eligible for the place I loved-I wouldn't know until later that I might have been accepted there had I passed the interview (which I didn't attend, having already made my decision by then), and I wouldn't regret it until even later than that, when life and consequences had caught up with me.



This story is still incomplete. And I think it always will be, because I will never know where that other path would have led. I don't even fully know where this path is going. Maybe they'll merge somewhere, though. Maybe I'll be sure somewhere.


~Sam