Fate

When my mom gets drunk enough (I can usually tell when this point has been reached because her left eye closes.), she likes to talk about fate. It has annoyed me most of my life, but I have to admit, there's some interest in it for the sober person.

My mom has never been completely happy with where we have lived. She always finds something wrong with it. With the exception of one place, I've always tried to find the good parts about the area and embrace them. In our current town, she swears the people "are just weird here." I try to tell her that people are weird everywhere, and the people of this town closely resemble those of her beloved and often romanticized hometown, but she'll have none of it.

Anyway, during her fate conversations, she always wonders what would have happened if Dad, while in the Air Force, had gotten orders somewhere else, or other things that would change the course of events that led to me sitting here in this house, in this town, in this state, in this country. Playing with what ifs is kind of fun.

What if my grandfather hadn't fallen dangerously ill in the months preceding my birth? Living in Japan, Mom wasn't qualified to fly or something while she was pregnant with me, and couldn't come home to Virginia and her ailing father, but I was born three months early and they were able to fly home with me to see him in his last months. If that hadn't have happened, I might have grown up in Japan. How different my life would have been! Perhaps if my grandpa hadn't smoked all his life, or worked in the coal mines, or had a better genetically engineered heart, I would live in Japan right now.

Or what if my dad hadn't joined the Air Force? I would still have been born, but I would reside in my parents' hometown. I wouldn't have the childhood I'm now grateful for. I would have been subjected much more strongly to the religious throes of my grandmother. I would probably be sheltered and devout and slightly redneck.

I could sit here all day and play out the what ifs. A lot of things had to happen in order for me to arrive here the person I am. It's easy to say I'm glad what happened happened because I'm grateful of any good qualities I've come to possess and can tolerate all my faults.

But perhaps there's a far better version of myself lost to the hands of chance.

A song goes "some believe in destiny and some believe in fate, but I believe that happiness is something we create, and you best believe that I'm not gonna wait." I love that line. It's so true, and something perhaps my mother should embrace. It's not about where we moved to, the people and places that shaped me. It's about what I choose to do with what I have, and creating my own happiness. I'm only doomed to be unhappy if I condemn myself to it.

No fate about it.