Of Sliding Doors and 25th Hours
A text exchange with a friend:






I am reading How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti and she writes about the difference between feeling like destiny was sweeping her along and feeling like she is making her own choices.
For most of my life, one thing led to the next. Each step bore its expected fruit. Every coincidence felt preordained. It was like innocence, like floating in syrup. People were brought to me. Luck unfurled at the slightest touch. I had a sense of the inevitability of things as they occurred. Every move felt part of a pattern, more intelligent than I was, and I merely had to step into the designated place. I knew this was my greatest duty–this was me fulfilling my role.
But once I was married, my relationship to my destiny began to change… I was always second-guessing myself, always changing my mind. I would return down the wrong road, then set off along what I hoped was the right one… In all of this, there was an overarching question that never left my mind, an ongoing task that could never be called complete, though I hoped one day it would be: What was the right way to react to people? Who was I to talk to at parties? How was I to be?
I was finally in the midst of the universe’s indifference. It was like my mom and pop had died. It was up to me to choose. I saw that I could try and return to my husband if I wanted, but that this would not be destined, but my choice, but that this was no more required of me than not returning to my husband, which would also be a choice. The difference in these two paths had no intrinsic value–just difference. I could finally make up my own mind. I would have to decide how to be.
The truth is that I hate the feeling that I am actually making my own choices, being aware that by doing this, I am unable to do that, and what if that is what I should have done? I don’t believe in destiny, yet I want to feel like I am where I am supposed to be, where I am meant to be. Sometimes I feel like I see the signs that I am on the right path, that this is all leading me somewhere that might feel like home, but then, sometimes those signs evaporate, leaving me once again feeling like I’m floundering, choosing between different paths that have no intrinsic value. I want to see something ahead of me that feels like it should happen and then for it to actually happen. I hate feeling the weight of things that seem as if they should have happened and maybe came close to happening, but didn’t.

























Notes
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