Sometimes I think about parallel universes because I wonder what I’d be doing in them if I’d made different life choices.
I grew up in the small town of Dallas, Georgia. I graduated from college in 2004, but before I moved to Atlanta I never really found a good job, I was mostly working retail jobs that made me hate life. I moved to Atlanta in 2006 and since then I’ve done a little of this and that, but since 2010 I’ve been working at a nightclub and enjoy it.
But I wonder if there’s a parallel universe somewhere where I never left Dallas. I wonder what I’d be doing. Probably working in retail somewhere, questioning why I ever went to college and generally being depressed. In some parallel universe maybe I am doing that, and miserable as hell. Or who knows, maybe the misery of it would forced me to find something great? Hard to say. I know one thing, I’d be sexually frustrated, finding guys out there is nearly impossible. Maybe I would have gone straight and gotten a girlfriend…nah. That would have to be in another dimension. I might be overweight, when I visit Dallas I’m surprised how many people are. I don’t discount the influence of environment on the individual.
I wonder what kind of person I’d be if I hadn’t gone to college. Would I read as much as I do? I rarely did before college, now I consider it the only activity that doesn’t eventually feel like a waste of time. College opened me up to a lot of things and I felt I grew as a person. Would I listen to classical music or would I still be listening to rock? Would I be a Christian or an atheist?
Sometimes I miss college so much it hurts. I never went to parties or sporting events, I just loved the atmosphere of it. I liked learning, finding out about myself. You don’t always know what you like until you’re exposed to it. College was a stressful time, but I look back on it now as the best time of my life. Living and working a regular job can just feel so…stagnant by comparison. For a couple years afterward I thought of returning to college, but I know I’d just trying to relive the experience, and that’s not possible anyway.
Times of our lives come and go, and trying to relive them often seems like a futile effort because the places we experienced have changed, we have changed, and on a more subtle level we’re in a different life stage than the first time we lived it.
It’s better to make new experiences anyway.
But hey, maybe in some parallel universe I’m a perpetual student who just finds the means to stay in college forever. God, what a thought.
andy9279 