If, Then, Else
My father was a small business owner. As I think back, I suspect this happened out of necessity and not by choice. You see, at the age of 14, he was forced to start working to help support his family after a construction accident took the life of his father at a young age. My father was first generation “off the boat” that came through Ellis Island in the early 1940’s.
His family was very poor and no one had the benefit of a formal education. As I understand it, my dad was exceedingly bright and well-liked at school and despite receiving several offers to go to college, he started work full-time straight out of high school to continue to help support his family. At the time, I don’t think he gave it any thought. He just did “what he had to do”.
Before he died, he told me that he had 2 regrets, one of which I will relay here. He said that looking back, he regretted not being able to stay in school and always wondered what the tapestry of his life would’ve been had the circumstances allowed him to go to college after high school.
I think all of us can look back to specific moments in our life and see the proverbial “fork in the road”, where life offers us choices. They seem so clear in hindsight. I view them in terms of “IF…THEN…ELSE” computer language programming branches. “If I make choice “A”, then the likely result is “X”; If I choose “B”, I’ll likely end up in a completely different place.
In short, I try to explain to my kids that each successive choice we make leads us to different possibilities and (accordingly) to different successive choices (If, then, else branches). Some are small choices, and some large. It’s how our futures flow.
We all live with our previous choices, the choices that were made for us and the choices of our parents. All of these accumulated and conspired over time to bring us to our current “place”. Now comes a point of decision: If you want a different “place” (result) for yourself today, you will have to actively make some new and different choices. You cannot “undo” what has been done, but you can take that experience and change your future. It’s like “hacking” your own life.