“Can you make a mistake and miss your fate?”
My freshman roommate had this Sex and the City quote hanging up in our dorm room and I’ve thought about it many times over the years. Whenever I feel really rudderless, it pops into my mind and I wonder if I made a wrong turn somewhere and totally missed the big, flashing sign that says FATE in 72-point font.
The older I get, though, the more I see how much these mistakes make our fate.
After I went to Italy, I wrote about the trip in my travel journal and one of the lines that still stands out to me is, “The best parts of our trip happened by accident.”
That particular line has always resonated because it was so true—the most memorable experiences of that trip were the parts that weren’t planned. The days when we got lost and stumbled onto an adventure or met a fellow traveler and allowed them to alter our itinerary. Did we know that we were going to meet a guy from Argentina and take a day trip with him to Pisa and Cortona? No, but that was a great experience.
When I take a larger step back and think about the course of my life in the same fashion, I see that a lot of the “mistakes” were what led me to big revelations. A conversation with a grumpy customer at my high school job eventually led me to take a trip to Israel. A night full of interesting dreams inspired me to pitch a dissertation about dreams in romantic literature for my MA.
During my MFA program, a teacher asked us to create a short piece on our path to writing. I crafted something about how I fell onto all of these different paths that led me to that particular creative writing program and framed it in the sense that I left the entire decision up to fate.
“It sounds like you did know what you were doing,” my teacher said when I finished reading the piece to the class. I remember getting quiet for a second as I thought about what he said.
“You’re right,” I finally admitted. And you know what? He was .
I’m not saying I don’t believe that certain things are meant to be. On the contrary, I definitely think things happen for a reason. But I also think we have more of an active role in the choice than most of us give ourselves credit for.
With that in mind, I’m sure I will still have days where I succumb to wondering if I made a mistake and totally bypassed my fate, but on the whole, I’m going to try to realize that the entire journey is important for the destination—even if there are a few bumps, detours, and mixed exits along the way.
