Falling into place

I wonder how many people are where they are in life, purely because that’s where the chips fell.

How many specialists have the skills that they have, not because of any passion or desire to be in that niche, but by accident? Perhaps because of momentum and inertia, or the requirements of a contract or job, and sooner or later they realised that their skills related to one specific field? One thing led to another and they woke up specialised.

Or how many teachers didn’t know what they wanted to do with their life, so just stayed within the school environment?

Consider an engineer that knew she liked mathematics and physics and wanted to study those subjects, and just ‘fell into’ an architectural engineering career because she did an internship with her professor about some aspect of it.

Meanwhile, others surely picked a path and went for it. Some careers or lifestyles seem very hard to ‘fall into’ and have an air of intentionality to them, at least in my perception. I can’t imagine anybody becoming a lawyer by chance.

It seems very weird to me that for a lot of us, our lives are shaped by accident and opportunity. Who we are and how we identify ourselves can be completely altered by freak chance. Think of a situation where you accepted or rejected an opportunity. Perhaps you took a job out of necessity, or rejected a gig because you didn’t want to work in a specific field. Could your decision have radically altered your life if you had selected the other outcome?

The path that I took to get to be who I am today is confusing and hard to follow. Some of it was influenced by decisions that I took on a whim. Other parts were opportunities that naturally opened themselves to me based on earlier outcomes. Very little of it was intentional, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I guess that some people play the hand that they are dealt, whilst others strive to get the hand that they want.

Where does your life lie?

Would you have done things differently?