Grappling With the Paths I Didn't Take

"We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours."

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In Cheryl Strayed’s essay, ‘The Ghost Ships That Didn’t Carry Us,’ the author reflects on her decision to have children, in response to a man who is wondering whether he should have his own. She writes, “If I could go back in time I’d make the same choice in a snap. And yet, there remains my sister life. All the other things I could have done instead.” It is so natural, so human, to be curious about our “sister life” that countless books and movies have been dedicated to the exploration. Take: ‘Sliding Doors,’ The Midnight Library, and “Dark Matter,” to name a few.

I would love to walk each path my life could have taken—to have that backyard wedding, to have birthed the baby conceived between my earthside little loves, live in new york, marry a prince (for the story), stay in my hometown, be a kindergarten teacher—then select the option I like best. In the poem that inspired the title of Strayed’s essay, Tomas Tranströmer writes, “I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.” It is tragic and terrifying that we only get one shot at life and have to stumble through it as we go, only understanding the repercussions of our decisions in hindsight. Kierkegaard is spot-on when he says, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” I can return to the fantasy of the “what if” over and over, but will never have the opportunity to actually live it or know where it may have led.