• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Alternative life stories

rynner2

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
54,631
There is a literary genre of alternative history, where authors ask questions like
'What would the world be like if Hitler had won the war?'.

But there must be many more stories on personal lines that ask similar questions,
and you wonder how life might have been if something had gone differently.


What would your life have been like if:

You had got that job you were so keen on?

You had never met a certain person?

An accident had not injured you for life?

You had won the lottery?

etc, etc.


Some of these alternatives will have been down to choices you made yourself,
and some will have been the result of outside influences.


My own particular example is in the latter category:

At school, at the end of my fourth year (aged about 16), I came top in two subjects in the end of term exams, Physics and Art.

But then I moved to another school (because my father was promoted, and the family moved) where Art was not part of the curriculum. So for some years subsequently I followed a scientific career, before branching off into other things.

But I sometimes wonder, how would my life have been if I had continued at the first school, and pursued Art instead?


No doubt many (or most?) other posters here could come up with similar tales....
 
Many years ago, when I was a teenager I turned down a job as a trainee veterinary nurse. I've always wondered what would have happened if I'd taken the job. I now work as a human nurse (that's a nurse for humans, as opposed to a nurse who is a human - although I am that as well...) but I still feel quite regretful that I didn't pursue my lifelong dream of working with animals. I find them much more interesting than people. My life now is pretty good and I enjoy my job, but I do still yearn for a life where I get paid to cuddle puppies and kittens all day.

Ironically it was my love of animals that made me turn down the job in the first place. It was a live-in job and I wouldn't have been allowed to keep my dog in the house. I couldn't leave him, so had to sorrowfully turn down the dream job. If I'd given up the dog my life would have definitely been different. It was because of him that my life took the course it did - but that's a whole other story.
 
I sometime think about such things, but try to avoid doing so - it could, if done with thte wrong attitude, be very depressing.

Here's some things of mine:

I wonder what would've happened if I'd taken up climbing when I was much younger? I started at 26, but if I'd done it from when I was a teenager, or in University, it'd be something that would've had a significant effect on my life. Mainly in that I'd be really good at it now.

When I was in high school about 14 or 15, I was asked out by a girl who I had been an aquaintence of since we were tiny. She was easily the prettiest girl in the school and I thought she was taking the piss. Turns out she wasn't, and had had a crush on me for ages. If I could go back in time, I'd give myself a SERIOUS kicking for turning her down. :laughing: :hmph:

I also wonder what would've happened if I didn't hang around with a bunch of losers in 6th form. They really spannered up my life, although it seemed fun at the time. Same with University... :roll:

I also wonder what would've happenned if I didn't move to Wales for a job, but remained living around Yorkshire.

Regrets, I've 'ad a few...
 
I wonder how my life would be different if i had decided to stay at home and commute to uni rather than live nearby....

...pretty obvious really...am only in my second year...but my life would have been so depressingly boring and so on, that id rather not think about it.

Plus, moving out has allowed my to grow dramatically as a person....has been fun, and hopefully will keep being fun!!!!
 
I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd stuck to my first plan of studying linguistics at Bangor uni (middle of nowhere in Wales and several hundred miles from home), instead of choosing my local polytechnic and doing sociology? Maybe I'd have had a sparkling academic career. Then again, I wouldn't have the friends and hubby I do now.

Biggest thing I wonder is how my life would have been different if my mother hadn't divorced my drinking, philandering dad. I wonder if I would have ended up more like him? :shock:
 
I almost joined the USAF about 11 years ago.

I was pretty much antiwar back then, too, but I was also 'anti-affording college,' so I thought I could do my service, get out and get some training, etc... you know all that kind of stuff. This very attractive young woman talked me out of it- right after I passed the physical and was at the Greyhound station waiting to take a bus home.

Hmm... been lots of wars this past decade.

I ended up majoring in Russian Literature and remaining broke as hell. :D
 
I often wonder about this as when I filled out my PCAS and UCAS forms 12 years ago, I had decided to choose a university in London and live at home but in an inexplicable moment I put my second choice uni in Kent down as my first choice instead of the London one. I got in there and now everything I have in my life has directly or (not very) indirectly come from that decision. Most of my mates are from that uni or mates of those mates I met at uni, my job came from a recommendation from someone I met at uni, my boyfriend I met through work, the area I now live in (in London) I chose to be near my uni mates, even my cat I got from someone at work. So if I had put down that first choice I wouldn't have the life I have now. I know you can say that about most things ion life, but it just always strikes me that all I have now is from one moment of madness!
 
I suspect that the roads not taken all lead roughly to the same place - at least psychologically. We would have made the same mistakes in a slightly different setting. Or had nearly similar successes.

Of course there are always those exceptional moments, such as the sudden realisation that in this particular little hell, the unsuitable spouse has just served you those poisoned mushrooms.

There are worse fates than Bangor, surely. :?
 
You're probably right in some factors, James, but not in others. Your experience shapes your expectations so much, and frequently we bounce off contingencies. I would be a writer where-ever I grew up, but if I had gone to Athens to act as au pair to my Dad's second family that time would I be living in Europe now and part of a completely different literary scene? If Dad had never gone into the Air Force, but stayed in small town Iowa, would I still have discovered RPGs when I went to college and been queen of the geeks? If I hadn't been Queen of the Geeks would I have discovered as easily that children's books were my true metier (in my day, ALL the good geek literature, regardless of intended audience, wound up in the children's section)? Would I have been sidetracked, like my best friend from the Iowa days, by the expectations of a family culture that air force bratism liberated me from?

The books would necessarily have been very different indeed, because of the strong influence on them of the setting I'm in and the people I know. Since the books are why I'm alive, what I would have written is an even bigger question for me than where I would be living and to whom I would be married; yet I find that, absent any answers to those lesser questions, I can't begin to envision what the books would be like, apart from the voice. My voice has been fundamentally the same since I was 8.
 
If I'm feeling down, the whole "if only" thing can make me even more depressed. We've all done things we regret in the past (I can think of decisions which, if not taken, would have improved my life immeasurably, at least in the short term) but, unless someone comes to us with a time machine, the past is exactly where those choices will have to remain.

I'd like to think there's some validity in the "all roads lead to Rome" theory, where most of us end up in roughly the same place in the end regardless of our choices. Sure, we can look back at the route we took and wonder what the other paths would have looked like, people we would or would not have met along the way. Myself, there are enough good things in life today that I wouldn't want to go back and risk putting right any possible wrongs. See "The Butterfly Effect" (in all good DVD stores now) for a good illustration of what I mean.

Having said that (and sounding a bit too philosophical for my own good there - sorry), when we're talking about the sweep of human history, I'm a big fan of stories like "Fatherland" and "The Man in The High Castle" which ask "what if?" in an intelligent way. I'm waffling again, so I'll shut up now!
 
Good lord I have so many of these.

I think my essential character would have remained the same, but things such as employment (employability), hobbies, personality fads, etc, would have been drastically different had I taken different paths in the past.

Heh: 'Personality fad' is of my own coinage, I think. I use it to describe the 'personality' that one projects, or that one believes one projects toward others. Works in the opposite way too.
 
life is like the roll of the dice in a game of backgamon..

there is always
a good move
a better move
the best move

your choice....let the game begin.
 
I resat a year of uni. Actually it was two years, but the second time doesn't really matter because, by coincidence, the only people I knew at all in that year also ended up resitting. But my point was that when you resit, unless it's the first year I guess, it's harder to make friends, so I lost more friends in my original year than I gained in my new year. So I wonder who I'd be hanging out with if I hadn't resat.

I used to drink a lot, and then I developed a stomach problem which stopped me, so things could have gone different there.
 
Things that I probably shouldn't have done:
a) after winning a play-writing competition, turn down the opportunity to have lunch with the head of Drama for Radio 4
b) turn down three jobs I actually wanted, twice because I got cold feet, once because I'd already started a job I wasn't really happy about , but felt guilty about abandoning
c) turn down the opportunity to take part in a play-writing workshop at the National Theatre, because I felt guilty about taking leave from work.
 
Does anyone think that fate, destiny and all that has some if any influence upon us? Im not truly convinced. I believe we make are own paths in life up to a point, as there are things that can happen to us, our family and friends which are beyond our control. I lost a baby three years ago, I have complety come to terms with it at present, but there are days where I ponder how totally different my life would be now if things had been different.

The future is still waiting to happen, the past cannot be changed. Although in another five or ten years we will all probably thinking back to the things we are doing now and wonder all over again at what could of been.
 
I think the tree of life is a good symbol. As you climb the tree you come to forks, when you turn onto a particular branch there are some things you can't avoid and more chances to avoid some. Maybe it's twisted in such a way that there are some things you can't avoid no matter what way you choose. With every choice you move along another branch to the inevitable end. I wonder if the ending is different on each one? :hmm:

We start out where anything is possible and the choices we make turn the possible into probable then finally inevitable.

Whenever I find myself thinking of what might have been I like to think that I wouldn't be the same person, my experiences have made me who I am and I'm quite content with that.
 
Tree of Life? Does that mean we all start off with the same good thick trunk and it's just the daftest monkeys that end up out on the thinnest limbs?

A comforting thought, as I munch on my grapes. :?
 
I think I'm having an alternative life right now - for some reason BBC1 is showing what's supposed to be on BBC2, and vice-versa!

So is my TV listing printed wrong, or has the Beeb now got so many channels that someone has pressed the wrong button somewhere?

EDIT:
Or maybe the celestial joker has retuned my TV.... :shock:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Tree of Life? Does that mean we all start off with the same good thick trunk and it's just the daftest monkeys that end up out on the thinnest limbs?

A comforting thought, as I munch on my grapes. :?
Click to expand...

then there are the sloths who find a comfy spot and sit there till the tree rots.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top