Life Imitating Art

I'm sure at one point in our lives we've all seen some movie about time travel where the traveler is always warned not to change anything in the past for fear of some ripple effect that could change the world as we know it.  I sometimes find that to be true about the people we come across in our daily lives.  We have no idea how the impact one small conversation had with a stranger may change the course of our own lives.

Take school for instance.  Each semester I enroll in classes with countless other students, spend 16 weeks getting to know those students, listening to their experiences and possibly heeding their advice.  Then at the end of the semester we go our separate ways, most likely never to see each other again unless we cross each others paths on campus, at a football game or in a mall. But like one of those fantasy books that allows you to choose your path, my interactions with these people could be life altering.  

In Summer A I took Spanish II and became friends with a student named Alex who was raised in a Cuban speaking household.  Needless to say, he spoke spanish pretty well and was pretty much the lone reason I passed the class.  Now think about what could have happened if in a previous class another student had told me that I didn't want to take that professor for Spanish II.  I might have heeded their advice and not taken that class, not met Alex and then failed Spanish II.  Failing would in turn cause me to have to take it over again instead of taking another class where I may or may not have met the person that in the future would introduce me to an editor or publisher that would help me produce a bestseller. 

Over Summer B I've been taking a Creative Writing class and I've also met a couple of interesting people.  Now if there are actually students, especially the younger ones, in my class that think they can learn from my experiences, I'm happy to share them.  But not everything that I have done has turned out right, otherwise I wouldn't still be in college at the age of 36.  I hope that I would give advice that leads them to becoming Nobel Prize winners rather than strippers or cab drivers, but you never know. 

If the evening that I met my wife at the beach a friend had called me and asked me to go to a club or party instead of cruising the strip I might not be here today.  I was living a fairly self-destructive life until then. 

I guess the point of this is to point out how random life can be.  The smallest interactions and conversations could change the course of our lives for the better or maybe for the worse.

Choose wisely-ELI3