I thought today would be a fun day to play a little game of "what if" with pictures of my Valentines sprinkled in. Life is a series of seemingly insignificant decisions that - taken in whole - can significantly alter the path of your life.
What if...
- I hadn't gone to the University of North Dakota?
- And then what if I hadn't changed my dorm assignment when I realized I mistakenly had picked a dorm with community bathrooms instead of suites with a bathroom shared by 4 people (community bathrooms sounded like my personal h*ll, honestly)?
- Because if I hadn't changed dorms, then I wouldn't have met my friend Katie, who had joined the Delta Gamma sorority in the fall of 1999.
- If I hadn't met Katie, I don't know that I would have gone through rush/sorority recruitment during the spring of 2000. I ended up joining the same sorority as Katie and became a Delta Gamma.
- Because if I hadn't joined Delta Gamma, I don't think I would have found out about the Toastmasters program at UND. For those who aren't familiar with Toastmasters, it's a public speaking program. For whatever reason, most of the people in the Toastmasters program at UND were members of sororities and fraternities.
- If I hadn't participated in Toastmasters, I wouldn't have met a girl named Hilary who lived in the sorority that was next door to Delta Gamma.
- Because if I hadn't met Hilary, then she wouldn't have gotten to know me and thought to set Phil and me up on a blind date. I got a message from Hilary on LinkedIn in the fall of 2012 saying that she worked with a guy with whom I had an uncanny number of things in common (ran a marathon, got his MBA at the same university as me, and was also working on his CFA) whose curiosity was piqued when Hilary said she knew a girl with a degree in math that might be a good fit for him.
- And if I hadn't checked my LinkedIn account, I wouldn't have gone on that blind date. And I wouldn't be married to Phil.
- And if all of that hadn't happened, I would be the mom of Paul.
I don't know if I believe in fate and destiny when it comes to finding your partner, but it is interesting to see how one little decision, many years ago, could have altered my life's path in profound ways!
Happy Valentine's Day!
13 comments:
love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love!!!!! Happy Valentine's!!!!
Now you're making me think about all my what ifs! That's perfect for Valentine's Day! And I think I just traced mine back, too!
You were a DG? I didn't know! My cousin was and my closest friend!
Awww this is so sweet! And one of my closest friends was a DG--they're they nicest people :)
Aw so fun! I loved reading this and it's so true. All those little things that happen that seem so insignificant at the time can lead up to one pretty big significant life!
That is a fun what if! I picked App State because I liked the graffiti on these tunnels that ran under a busy road in the middle of campus, and the natural beauty of the mountains. But when I saw the tunnels, I was sold. What a strange thing to hinge such a huge decision!
This is so sweet! It's amazing how these little decisions add up. <3
And look at your cute family now! <3
I love this so much! So much fun to hear how everything had to go the way it did!
My meeting of Eric and having Max and Jack are also quite crazy. The night I met Eric I was out for my friend's birthday. We were supposed to go out the week before but it was a huge snow storm. I knew my friend because she went to my college, but we likely would not have met/become friends except that we knew each other because our high school boyfriends were friends with each other. Her boyfriend used to live in my town in middle school, and kept in touch with my boyfriend when he moved 30 minutes away. Neither of those relationships survived, but our friendship did and led to me meeting Eric. There were also a lot of ways I could've ended up studying abroad that semester instead of being home and being out for her birthday. So it's all crazy.
Also? I now complain about what a guilty person I am, but it also contributed to my relationship with Eric because I hardly remembered our first meeting (oops) but allowed Eric's friend to guilt me into hanging out with them again. Good thing I did! I guess guilt isn't all bad, ha ha.
Life has so many crazy things like this. How easily it could've been all different.
What a fun walk down memory lane!
SO many twists and turns - it's kinda hard to imagine a life so different from where you are now, but if a led to b led to c and at any point, you'd gone down another route, life would be waaay different. weird but cool to think about!
That was so much fun to read! I love "love stories"!
Oh, I loved this... I am someone who constantly thinks about the 'what ifs' of life... it's just so crazy to think about how one little decision might have changed your whole trajectory!
Such a cute post! I always wonder if the tiniest decisions we make daily impact way more than we realize through a ripple effect. I'm thinking they do!
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