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Another week has passed and more big news has come. I wasn’t joking about life’s great junction and it seems a few more people have reached theirs.

Now one thing to remember is that the choices these people make can sometimes affect other people too – such as a driver changing into your lane in front of you or your favourite watering hole closing down temporarily because the landlord decided to move to work at the brewery that owned it – and sometimes this may present opportunities to you and suddenly before you know it, it’s your turn to go left, right or straight on.

How you proceed is of course, up to you and it’s you that you should be looking out for. But it really gives you a numinous feeling knowing that the butterfly effect can even crop up in your everyday decisions.

I find this idea fascinating sometimes (and if you’re still reading this 3 weeks into the topic, I can only assume you’re either humouring me or are interested in the same manner) and how similar it can relate to media such as ‘choose your own adventure’ books and  recent video games such as much of the Telltale collection of games, DONTNOD Entertainment’s “Life Is Strange” and Supermassive Games’ “Until Dawn”. Running through these media not only allow good replayability and good value for money, but let you answer that “What If?” curiosity that many of us posses. If we were allowed a rewind superpower or the ability to quickly press “reset” on life and to replay from where we last saved, our lives would be perfect!

Or would it? I suppose it would be theoretically impossible to be right for everyone as we would have to have infinite parallel timelines to satisfy this, where in only one or a small number of the outcomes would allow us to be happy (not that we’d know unless we had a magical TV channel selection like in Rick & Morty). But even if only one or a small number of us had the power to change and re-change the world over indefinitely, would we appreciate the perfect life? Would we eventually know what perfect was given nothing will have gone wrong in so long that we can no longer appreciate what ‘wrong’ is? Who knows, but thankfully having both right and wrong in life ironically allows us one constant in our dynamic day to day lives that we so often managed to take for granted.

So whilst we might only get one go around and we often can’t see all of the outcomes first, we know that many people before us had to make this decision and we won’t be the last to either (unless a number of certain world leaders all make the decision to type in some given codes and launch some pretty world ending stuff, then that might be, but hopefully that won’t happen anytime soon!), so if it’s your turn, go ahead and give it some thought, but be sue to make it before those lights change and the opportunity passes you by.  And if you’re not the best decision maker, maybe have a look at some of the suggestions above to give it a practice – over time you might just surprise yourself.

I’ll see how my story goes and if any junctions may or may not come up for me in the meantime.

Happy Travels!

Mike


The Wisdom of Old Tom

This week has been a bit of a roller-coaster. From the rising and falling of day to day workload to the emotions about a dear colleague at work moving onto a new place and leaving our team.

On the one hand I’m happy for the new challenges moving on from the relentless workload of the last few months and the opportunity to do different things each day and happy our dear colleague can do the same. 

But at the same time we have a little sadness with the team breaking down a little bit and the knowledge that whilst we all move forwards,  the sobering reminder that the things around us are as dynamic as we try  to be and that not everything always moves at the same pace or in the same phase as us. 

We’re often told that there’s a time and a place for everything – often conveniently a short time after we’ve said something at a bad time –   but it’s meaning rooms true on many more occasions in life.  You can plan opportunities for months at a time only to nearly miss the opportunity of doing it.  Similarly you can take a risk that doesn’t work out and whilst it’s you should have waited a little longer before acting. 

Once half of the battle in life is making progress. The other is knowing when our where to take the actions that lead to it., lest you looking back on it in the future and feeling remorse. Sometimes it takes skill and experience to get a higher chance of getting it right,  other times is total guesswork and faith,  but making the choice is often better than ignoring it and remembering that justifying sitting something out is different than not bothering to decide at all. 

So have a think when the next junction comes up for you:  go left,  right or straight on.  When you consult your ‘map’ or experience from your journey you’ll be able to decide easier. Just remember that when the light turns green,  it will change again eventually,  so don’t miss your turn or you’ll never move forward (and like driving,  will inevitably drive those behind you insane for loitering). 

Happy Sunday everyone. 

Mike