Nikte – The Decisions We Didn’t Take
Two weeks ago, I sat outside my college building. It was a sunny day, and my friends and I decided to soak up the sun on a bench while we did our homework. In front of the Media Center, to the side, is the Law School. Coming out of that building was a friend I met in my first semester of college. He was with four other people, laughing and talking. For a moment, I wished I knew what they were talking about and wondered what would have become of me if I had never changed my major.
When I entered college, I declared a Legal Studies major because I planned to attend law school and become a lawyer. However, after one semester in that major, I decided that, although I found it interesting, it was obviously not my passion, and I changed majors. So, the following semester, I saw my friends from the first semester less often and made new friends. But, just like your first love, those friends you make at the beginning of college become unforgettable, and if for some reason you stopped hanging out with them, there’s always that moment when you run into them and wonder what would have become of you if you had remained friends.
So far, everything is going well, and I love what I do as well as the people I study with. But there are times when I wonder what would have become of me if I had never left that major. At the same time, I wonder what I would be doing right now if I had decided to study at a university in Mexico. My dream has always been to return to live in Mexico, so when I was about to finish high school, I got the crazy idea to research universities there, but in the end, I never applied. However, from time to time, when I’m bored, I visit the websites of certain universities and wonder: what would my academic life and university experience have been like if I had chosen to study there?
Feelings are interesting. How can we experience nostalgia for something we never lived? I once heard someone say, “The past is the perfect tense, and since perfection doesn’t exist, neither does the past.” Everyone says “I should’ve” when they try to correct something they did in the past. At one point, I took that phrase as a comforting mantra to let go of what wasn’t and move on. But upon analyzing it again, I realize that I don’t like that phrase because, truthfully, I don’t regret anything. It would be an insult to my current reality to say that if I had made those decisions, I would be happier or have more opportunities. The past is not the perfect tense; it is an alternate reality that, in the end, we will never know how it goes.
As I see it, there are no good or bad decisions in this life, only those we make and those we don’t make, each leading us to live a necessary reality. Although it is inevitable to think about what would have become of us if we had made a different decision, I am sure the ones we made were necessary to live the experiences that destiny had in store for us.
After watching the guy and his friends get into a car, one of my friends made a joke, and I returned to my reality. I turned to look at my friends and realized that I am not missing anything; I am exactly where I need to be, and that makes me happy.
