Zig not Zag

Zig not Zag

When is the wrong turn the right one?  When could I say I should have ‘zigged when I should have zagged’?  As I look back over a lifetime of options I often wonder at the decisions, choices, directions I have taken or been made to take.  ‘what if…’ is a phrase I am sure we all have pondered in our lives and I am certainly in that group that wonder about alternative futures that would have become reality had I taken the opposite path.  Of course the only reality for me is the one in which I exist now. ‘All roads lead to where I stand…’ (taken from Don McLean’s Crossroads’ song sums up my philosophy on this.  I believe I may be called pre-determinism and whole libraries have been written on that one.

As I sit here in the here and now I can ponder with relative safety about some of the directions I have taken or been obliged to take.  Whole swathes of reality suddenly disappear. I’m an avid fan of the Back to the Future film trilogy and I am writing nothing today that hasn’t been said or thought before. Writers, dreamers and philosophers have for centuries feasted on the theoretical concept of alternative pathways of existence.

For me as I look back over my own reality I see a reoccurring theme.  I haven’t taken the wrong turn, I have been saved from doing so and each blocked pathway ultimately lead to a better way.  Had I not been prevented from going back to a youth camp in Wales in 1974 as a junior officer I wouldn’t have met my now wife in Switzerland the same year. I could point at quite a few alternatives or directions not taken, but suffice to say I have been saved from a wrong turn on countless occasions.

For me at least I am glad that wrong was right.