Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition

I’m thinking about the constructs of education as the light turns yellow. For an instant, I’m unsure of what to do. There isn’t time to hesitate about the pros and cons of each choice, so I instinctively put my foot on the break. I say instinctively, but lately, I think I’ve been instinctively drawn to the gas more often, racing through on the brink of red lights as if my time were too valuable to waste sitting in a car for a few moments. Maybe I just like the excuse to go especially fast, to jam my foot all the way down on the peddle. Nevertheless, today I stopped.

Which turned out to be for the best, as it gave me a few moments to sit and consider my decision, my pause. Had I gone for it, raced through the impending red light, my whole life could be different. It’s like the movie Sliding Doors, which is certainly worth checking out if you haven’t seen it yet, where we watch two versions of the protagonist’s life; one in which she catches the sliding doors of the subway home, and one in which she doesn’t. That single second between catching the train and missing it changes everything. Likewise, although it would be too much for a movie plot, every second to follow does that as well. It would drive anyone mad to think about it on a regular basis, but every once and a while, I like to ponder what my life would be like if I had made that red light, if I had stopped to pick up that penny, if I had bothered to yell hello across the street to him. Maybe I’d be a completely different person.

It’s all speculation of course. There’s no way of knowing what life would be like if I had done those things any more than if I hadn’t done those things. It’s just so funny to think that every instant we are making decisions that change the direction of our lives. We are constantly shifting our paths of existence without even knowing it.

There are of course the bigger decisions as well, the ones that seem more life defining such as where to go to college, what to major in, who to give our heart to, when to say goodbye. These things tend to torture us, especially if we feel like we’ve made the wrong decision, but here’s what I’ve come to realize. There is no right decision. There is no right or wrong in anything. Even those things that we know to be right and moral and good, well, why do we know them to be that way? Do you ever think about that? We know things as absolute truth because we are taught to know them as truth. We are taught what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is criminal, just as we are taught that green means go and red means stop.

But maybe life is completely yellow. Maybe that ambiguity between slow down and speed up is what life is all about, those choices we are faced with daily of how to act and react to the world around us. In reading the blog of someone unhappy at her choice of school, I found myself being transported back to my freshman year, remembering feeling the exact same way. Often, I still wonder like she is now, how much easier it would have been had I just picked the right school to begin with. The thing I know now though, is that I did choose the right school. It felt right at the time, and in being the wrong fit, was still in it’s own way right. That’s what I mean about choices. I learned more about myself in my discovery that I knew less about myself than I thought I did. Yes, it was painful at the time, but I am who I am because of that pain, because I was forced to reevaluate everything I knew to be true.

I don’t know what it would be like had I loved a typical four-year, dorm-room, job-free college experience. I don’t know if my life would be better or worse. All I can really know is that my life is what it is, and it is that way because of the choices that I’ve made, both big and small. Had I put my foot on the gas this morning instead of the break, everything could be different. We can’t ever know what would have been or what will be. After all, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.