Days that shape Lives

I’m half way through “One Day” by David Nicholls, and enjoying it very much. I loved “University Challenge” too. The author appeals to me because he writes of exactly my generation, he captures the embarrassing and pathetic truth in all our lives, and because I love his jokes.

The book is set on the same day across many years, but the title is also making the point that individual days, even moments, have a profound effect on all our lives. We rarely see them at the time, but there are forks in all of our roads, where we veer left or right. Which way we turn shapes the rest of our life.

This is certainly true of my own life, and probably of everyone’s. Last week I was sitting with an old friend in a bar. This friend is old as in I have known him a long time, but he is also not young. We talked about the day of his medical for Dutch national service. He had a minor heart defect, and at the end of his examination, the army doctor offered him a choice – he could complete the form in a way to excuse my friend his service, or he could allow him to join up with everyone else. My friend chose to by-pass the national service, and that choice, made in an instant, had a huge impact on the rest of his life. If he had known that at the time, he might have been paralysed by indecision.

Today, as an exercise, I tried to write down ten or twenty such shaping moments. I tried to be selective, choosing not momentous occasions, but rather decision points or points that had a lasting effect on me. The momentous occasions are often the outcomes of such points rather than the points themselves.

The exercise was poignant for me. Unsurprisingly, many of the moments I chose were very personal and at times quite intimate, so I won’t share them here. Nonetheless, I recommend the exercise. What I will share some general discoveries.

One weird discovery is about association. For many of the events, I can recall vividly something else going on at the time. I recall one decision I made in 1978, and just at the time the news came on TV that a pope had died (two died in that year, so I can’t quite place the moment). Another moment in 1985 I associate with listening to a particular piece of Rachmaninov on my first Walkman. A more recent decision was made listening to Byrd. A fourth association is of a weekend exactly thirty years ago, a shaping weekend in my life played out to the backdrop of war being declared on Argentina.

Now, what is going on here? True, many pieces of music or world events do have some association in my mind. But it seems extraordinary that so many life-changing times have such clear linkages. It is not as if I knew the long-lasting effect of these moments at the time, at least not consciously. Perhaps something was happening in my subconscious. I cannot explain it, but I find it noteworthy.

A second discovery is the role of other actors. We like to think we have a modicum of control over our lives. We make plans, lists, choices. Yet in many of the items on my list, a critical role was played by someone else. And usually the someone else is, in Hollywood parlance, not a co-star in my movie, but merely a supporting actor or actress, someone who has otherwise played a bit part in my life. A chance remark or a reaction to something I said or did was often what shaped the lasting effect.

This discovery also came as a surprise. Far from striding manfully through my own life, I am blown around by the whims of others. Not just blown a little bit either, blown into a different ocean. True, I am in charge of my own reaction, but I cannot escape the conclusion that at key moments I have placed my destiny squarely in the hands of a dice roll of someone else. This made me wonder who else I have been the one rolling the die for? Whose life have I shaped without realising it? How small we all are!

A final discovery is how little I have considered key decisions. True, it would have been impossible to anticipate that many of the moments on my list would have had such a lasting impact. But for others it was all too obvious. Here was a huge road sign in the middle of the road, offering clear choices with major repercussions. Yet when I think back to those choices, I was very careless in how I made them. Did I write down pros and cons? Did I consult others? Did I take my time? Did I heck! In most cases I shot straight from the hip. I won’t say the choices were wrong, actually in many cases they seemed to turn out fine, but I certainly can’t claim I was using all the tools available to me at the time.

A bit like the associations, perhaps the subconscious has played a role here. Knowing the weight of a decision can be a massive burden, it can make a decision making process very painful and inhibit a decision at all. Perhaps my subconscious knew that, and deliberately set me into spontaneous mode. I wonder. What is also true is that maturity has lent more consideration to my key decisions, that I am not as impulsive as I used to be.

So I emerge from the exercise rather humbled. My key decisions have often been made using a flimsy process or delegated to random other people. My subconscious can spot a key moment of truth a mile off, so much so that it provides an association to mark the spot, but my conscious self cannot reward this. I have been blown around through my life like a feather in the wind.

As well as humbling, I find this discovery valuable. I already knew that as a parent I could claim little credit (or blame) for how my children blossomed, understanding the far more important roles taken by the children themselves and by fate. If I thought about it, I also knew my life outcomes were driven far less by my own choices but by accidents of birth (a white male child born in a middle class home at a time of unparalleled peace and prosperity, blessed with a high IQ – wow, what could be a luckier draw than that?). Now I come to realise that, even when given a limited opportunity to shape my own fate, my hand on the wheel is far from steady.