In 1998, a movie by the name of “Sliding Doors” was released. The film centers on a young woman who barely misses her train. However, instead of simply missing the train, the lady is given a look into what her life would be like had she arrived at the station ten seconds earlier and caught the train. The rest of the movie tracks these two alternate realities — and they are drastically different. Ultimately, she must decide which life she wants to live.
Recently, I’ve been pondering on this concept a lot. The film’s central idea relates to a phenomenon known as the “butterfly effect”, the notion that small events have the capacity to dramatically alter larger ones (e.g. the decision to grab a cup of coffee one morning can impact your career decision). Though I don’t completely subscribe to this notion, I think there’s some element of truth to the idea.
While I was in Hawaii, I felt this quite strongly. Every time my family visits Hawaii, we visit BYUH campus. BYUH is a church school that my parents, sister, and younger brother attended. Every time we go, I think of what my life would’ve been like had I attended a church school like BYU. How would my life be different? How would it be the same? Would I be married like my two siblings? Would I still be pursuing a high paying corporate job in a big city? What would my values be? How might I be interacting with my faith?
Graduating from college has allowed me to reflect on all the ways that I’ve changed since first setting foot on campus. Back then, I was everything an overzealous freshman might be: eager, anxious, naive, hungry, and very much curious about what the future would hold for me. Six years later, I leave college with only some semblance of that younger version of myself. I’ve gone back and forth about whether or not this installment of me is one that lives up to the person I hoped I’d be all those years ago. Not to say that I feel like a disappointment, but rather, I feel like the person I am today would be unrecognizable to that 18 year old freshman boy. My values seem different, my priorities completely shifted. In many ways, this is simply a side effect of growing up. Maturing into a person who begins to understand the world as it is. We make trade offs in the way we spend our time and energy and we do the best we can to optimize for what feels right, ultimately culminating into some approximation of a person.
I’ve started to question my intentionality in the process though. If the person I am today is a function of the choices and decisions that I’ve made, then how conscious have those choices been? How deliberate the decisions? We have the tendency to take ownership over the positive changes in our character, to take pride in how well we overcame an adversity and emerged stronger because of it. But what about the uglier sides of ourselves? How do we explain the ways in which we’ve changed that we might be more ashamed of? I’ve caught myself ascribing those differences to circumstance instead of any intentional action of my own. What should be accountability is often replaced with excusatory claims of being a victim to situation and environment. “Of course I’ve become more self centered, Harvard’s culture of high achievement makes it nearly impossible to look outside yourself at times!”. When I type it out or say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous. Nevertheless, my recent introspective bouts have been a wrestle between my past and present iterations of self as I try to navigate these changes in who I’ve become.
Ultimately, it’s likely a balance between the two. On the one hand, change is a product of the long term buildup of intentional choices that we make each day. On the other hand, we exist as pieces in a larger ecosystem of friends, coworkers, romantic partners, and all of the pressures and expectations that come with them. This ecosystem often holds an unconscious influence over our personal trajectory in a way that is hard to keep tabs on. As I grapple with these truths, I am left to consider two things:
- How much of the change in my life has truly been intentional, and how can I direct that intentionality to correct parts of myself that I am unhappy with now?
- If there exists a portion of change in myself that has been a product of my environment, has the environment I’ve placed myself in been the one most conducive to positive change?
I’d like to address these questions in reverse order, giving my thoughts on question #2 first. As concluded above, it seems that there is a portion of my emerging identity that has been inadvertently crafted by the circumstances of situations I have knowingly placed myself in. It’s unproductive to fall into the common trap of regretfully reflecting on the past. That is to say, I will do my best to leave words like “could’ve”, “would’ve”, and “should’ve” out of my commentary on previous decisions’ impression onto current outcomes.
In my lifetime, I have never met a pair of identical twins that I cannot eventually tell apart. Sure, upon first glance they look very similar. However, after a hours of knowing the duo, there are certain “tells” that your eye begins to hone in on. Maybe it’s the single freckle that only one of them has underneath their mouth, or the slight crook in the nose that the other has. In my two alternate versions of the past, this distinguishing feature is undoubtedly my decision to attend a church school or not. When I hear my friends talk about their experience at BYU, they often take for granted the fact that many of their formative adult years were spent in the company of people who share their values and see the world in a similar way. They often jeer at the professors who opt to begin each class with a word of prayer, poking fun at the overly devout gesture. But when these stories fall on my ears, there is a sense of longing. Or better put, a sense of be-longing — that I’ve never fully felt. And not belonging in the social sense. I very much feel accepted by my peers for who I am. I have always felt part of a community at school, but it’s been a community that I’ve built around me, not one that’s always existed with a special cut out just for me. I sometimes see the stitchings that bind me to this larger circle, and at times I feel a subtle yearning for a life in which the connection between myself and those around me is more seamless.
Of course, a side effect of this natural compatibility with others is a homogenous group dynamic. What would otherwise be an orchestra of thought diversity becomes radio static — the conglomeration of multiple similar voices that ultimately creates a single sound that is flat and untextured. It’s easy to villainize this type of environment, pointing out the blandness it may imprint on a young mind. However, I find that if we aren’t careful, we begin to lose the most basic parts of our identity. Values, perspectives, beliefs, and opinions that were once woven into the tapestry of who we are begin to fade. We become intensely focused on being open minded and we champion the multiplicity of thought that surrounds us to the point where we adopt everything. And herein lies my realization: in my earnest desire to branch out from what I believed to be a herd of sheep, I perhaps threw myself into a camp of chameleons. Constantly changing color to match the backdrop of my surroundings, because my surroundings were thought to be the perfect environment that one ought to emulate. But when you’re always changing color to match the setting, then the setting really matters. How ideal has my school environment truly been? What types of people does it attract? What kinds of attitudes does it cultivate?
I’ll note here that I don’t mean to paint myself as someone with no backbone. When I say that there have been times where I’ve constantly been changing colors, I’m referring to very specific attitudes and mindsets. In fact, I’d say that I’m someone who prides themselves on staying true to a lot of my core identity. However, these color shifts in various ways of thinking accumulate over time, and they begin to prod at the larger core values that make up who I am. As I close one chapter of my young adult life, I am ever aware that these minor repositionings have begun to press heavily on my deeper values and motivations. I have started to question who it is that I really want to be, and more and more I am left to wonder who it is that I truly should be? My upbringing and the culture that I was raised in set me on a very specific path, but as I begin to diverge from that, I am forced to confront what is truly right and what is not.
I’ve danced around the particulars of how it is that I’ve actually changed and what exactly is different about who I am now vis-a-vis who I thought I might be, but I think all that really matters is what I do about it moving forward. If my environment can have such an effect on who I am becoming, then is the solution to change my environment completely? Or, do I become more intentional with how much I draw from my environment? More decisive about the impact that my surroundings have on me?
Diving headfirst into the furnace of corporate America seems like a terrible way to place myself in an environment that is conducive to positive change, and I am trying hard to take the good and leave the bad. I think in regards to my surroundings, I am trying to increase the time that I spend with different spheres and ecosystems. At school, I thought it was enough to allocate my time with multiple different social circles and friend groups. However, at the end of the day, everyone in those different cliques were all college students. Very much in the same phase of life, and in many senses, of the same disposition and orientation towards the world. Sure, there were nuances in the way that they thought, but ultimately, it was the same sphere of the world. Consequently, I want to make sure that I increase the different spheres of the world that I am coming into contact with. Beyond work, there is my church community, running clubs, book clubs, interest groups, etc. Having more frequent touch points with people from these different spheres can make obvious the ways that one environment is having too much of an effect on who I am becoming.
I suppose an epiphany I am having is that true diversity is not necessarily found in the make up of one specific social ecosystem, but rather the aggregation of taking part in multiple different ecosystems. The ability to walk between these spheres and understand what you hope to draw from each. In this way, we also answer question #1. Traversing through all these disparate circles is a way to become an agent and not an object — aware of what I hope to learn and how I hope to change as a result of being a part of each of my communities, while never being too dramatically impacted by a single one. This phrasing sounds almost transactional, as if I have an agenda with each of the new groups I hope to befriend in this budding chapter of my life. Yet, I see it as an appeal to intentionality more than anything. I am more focused on ensuring that when I change colors, it’s with my consent and permission, and not because of a more pernicious shift that my surroundings are imposing upon me.
Of course, this is all easier said than done, but I am determined to look back on my life in ten, twenty, or even fifty years from now and say that as the doors of my metaphorical train of identity and existence were about to close shut, I made a deliberate decision to either push through the crowd and leap across the platform, or to instead wait patiently at the station for the next train to arrive. Whatever it will be in this next phase of life, I want my choice to be conscious, grounded, and rooted in the values that I hold close to my heart, and the people I hold even closer still.
