The Other Mes

When I was young, I read a series of books which consisted of adventure stories wherein the reader would periodically arrive at a literary crossroads - the situation is described and the reader is presented with options and directed to proceed to different pages depending on his or her choice.

These childhood stories seemed to me at the time to have endless, complicated branches, but in reality they were small books, maybe 100 or 150 pages, with only a handful of possible outcomes, arrayed along a spectrum stretching from positive to negative.

I remember that as I proceeded through the twists and turns, I would use as many fingers as I could manage to mark the prior turning points - in case I was dissatisfied with my chosen path, I could simply pop back to the preceding (or pre-preceding, pre-pre-preceding...) fork in the road and try out the other path. I was generally quite successful on these literary adventures: a clever and precocious young reader, blessed with enough fingers to steer my fictional avatar to one of the favourable endings.

But this type of indecisiveness is paralyzing in the real world: turning back the clock is never as simple as turning back a few pages. If we are lucky, we will get away with a few mulligans along the way, but you cannot make it a significant part of your game plan, a key element of your strategy.

As I look in the mirror today, and look to the future, I wonder how much am I still hedging my bets, scrambling to jam my fingers in all the other pages, thinking of all the other mes that I could be when I inevitably reject the one I chose?