Are you certain?
I recently went to my high school reunion, and it threw me into a bit of a spiral.
I connected with old teachers, old friends, classmates and a past crush whom I have not seen in more than well over 10 years. These were all people who had a profound impact to my life, and it started to make me think.
I started to revisit all the life decisions I have made over the years, and even some decisions I didn't make. The relationships I've built in the past years and the relationships I have lost, the career moves and the life that I have built.
I always thought I lived a life with no regrets and that I only moved forward... If you think that way, there's nothing wrong with it. I am just not one of those people.
I studied science in school and pursued technology as a career. I liked to be certain and I loved the idea of logic. If X, then Y. That's how I always thought about things. Somewhere out there, there was an absolute answer to every question out there, given that we have all the information and all the parameters. There must be some kind of equation to every problem out there. Or a solution to every situation. But when is having all the information ever the case?
It turns people's life are messy and unpredictable, at least that's how I felt about mine.
Most of my high school life, I convinced myself that I would go to military school. Having gone to army cadets for 4 years, and having good grades made it unfathomable to think there was even any remote possibility I would not be enlisted and get in. I couldn't have been more wrong. Despite passing the aptitude and physical tests, my application wasn't even processed, and I had no idea what went wrong.
I ended up getting in a program I didn't know much about and got a job pretty quickly after university, but I didn't like it very much. It was related to geotechnical and environmental consulting. My job consisted of supervising people drill holes on the ground and retrieving soil samples to take back to the lab. I would then write about the findings on a report. I wasn't that great at it, and I got fired about about half a year later. Thank god.
I was still in my early 20s, so after that I piggy-backed on a trip to Asia with some friends. I ended up living in China for a little over a year. I felt like I had failed and washed up ashore without any money left. At the time, even if I had returned to Canada, I wouldn't know what I would do. I started to settle into a bit of a routine, started dating and got another job doing environmental work. I never fully commited because I knew I wasn't going to stick around for long. But it wasn't until when my family all moved back to Canada, that I realized I had a hard time letting go of this small life I had built. I broke up with my girlfriend at the time, shortly after I had come back because I realized it wasn't realistic anymore. I felt so certain I knew what I was doing.
I moved around with my family after returning to Canada, and got a part time job as a postal clerk. I managed find a better job in a suave fashion after chatting up a geotechnical consultant, because I saw what he was doing at a site. I thought without a doubt, the third time doing environmental work would be the charm. Wrong again. The covid pandemic hit the globe shortly after I started, and it forced me to rethink my career decision as I was working remotely. After multiple signs from the universe, I realized I couldn't have been more wrong about what I was certain of.
I ended up giving computers and information a try. It worked better than environmental work, and now I am in my current stage of being a software developer. Just in time for the AI revolution and big companies making lay offs left and right.
This was a really long winded way of saying, we never really have all the information to make "correct" decisions in life. Uncertainty is a part of life and it will always be the case. I thought I was going to get it right by now, and that I would have figured out everything. I can only imagine I will be surprised again in the near future.
Come to think of it, I hated English class and writing essays growing up. Now I love reading, learning languages and writing my thoughts. So I have already proven myself wrong more times that I could count.
As for my regrets, I think I will live with them. A lot of good things, and happy things have happened to me over the years since high school days. I still ruminate and gripe over my past decisions I have made time to time, but I like to think that I have made good ones too. The high school me would be happy to see who I have become, I am sure of it. I feel happy these days, with new friends, new neighbours and a new family, and that's something.