Choose Interesting

Can you look back and see sliding doors moments in your life? You could have gone this way, or that, and the outcomes were defining? You can choose a fork in a trail, decide it’s the wrong path, push up, and go the other way. But life isn’t always like that. You don’t always get to retrace your steps. Sometimes you definitely choose the right path and sometimes you wonder how things would have been if you’d gone the other way. But unlike on the bike, you can’t pop back next weekend to find out.

In reality, life is full of these moments but most of the daily decisions we make we just don’t notice. Occasionally, something happens where you get a moment to appreciate the thank goodness I… left the house five minutes late and missed that train crash… saw that friend before they died… was there to help rescue that person… These heart in mouth moments remind us to be grateful for what we have.

Other forks in the road don’t reveal their paths for some time. Or, they’re not so much a fork, as a confluence of braided paths. So much is happening that you don’t really notice you’ve made a choice until the rut you’re on turns away from the others and you’re heading off in a new direction.

This week, thanks to Instagram, I found myself transported back in time. In front of me were three people I hung around with at the end of my time at Uni. It was a bit of an emotionally messy period. I’d finally left a long term and abusive relationship, and I didn’t quite know who I was any more after years of being told what I could (or couldn’t) do. Freed of this, I got to hanging around with a music-y art-y crew. They were good people, and I suspect we were all a bit lost in our own ways, figuring out how to live life and be happy.

Until I saw the picture on Instagram, I’d completely forgotten the crush I had on one of them. A crush which I did nothing about, and if there was any reciprocal potential there I ran away from it, too damaged from the previous relationship to get entangled again. I loved this musical arty scene, but between crush denial and lacking any skill or confidence on the musical front - and urgently needing to find a job and earn money - I drifted off into other things. However, it’s clear from Instagram that they did not - they’re still making music. One of them is a proper Grammy winning international success, all of them have at least one album to their name. They have lived the dream.

Practicality and other life choices took me off on something of a straighter path. Quite possibly a smoother one, with clear landmarks (job, promotion, house, husband, kids…) rather than the uncertain route of musical life, often subject to the whims of chance and fashion. Eventually, I think, that predictable surface led me to a junction where things got more interesting - the point where the Greenway passes a gap in the hedge and you peel off to explore what’s there. Which ultimately led me to here. Is it living the dream if you didn’t actually know it existed to dream about it?

We never quite know what the path ahead will hold, or where our choices will take us. Sometimes, we just need to get home, and the tarmac of the Greenway is the right choice. Perhaps we have a load of luggage, or an ebike, making life too heavy and complicated if we reach something too bumpy to ride. But other times, we have options - and then, taking the path that looks interesting rarely works out badly. On the bike, or off, I hope you get the chance to choose ‘interesting’.

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