“Off at Ireland, Elizabeth, off at Ireland”

“Harold, what are you talking about?”

“These are sayings that my grandfather made up…means that you can never tell what decisions in your life will have giant consequences. He thought of it because when the Titanic left England it made one stop in Ireland before it went into the Atlantic towards New York and then sank.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the months leading up to my graduation from university, some 25 years ago. It’s pure coincidence that I was studying in Ireland- but an interesting observation is that it was imprecisely a series of decisions that landed me in Dublin as a student in the first place. I was incredibly fortunate to not only have received a good education, but at the same time I wandered about the storied halls feeling like I had gotten away with something by existing there.

I’m a bit of a bookworm and recently found that introductory passage in a novel that’s a little all over the place but also a wonderfully interior account of a single person. I am reading it as a means of semi-respite from all the research I’ve been doing in preparation for another major life transition. A transition that was of course bound to come—but also one that is full of choice for me. As humans we’ve got all these forks in the road to manage, and as I approach this one I am kind of wowed by how we manage to walk around, looking like all of this is not baffling at all. Because the “off at Ireland” bit is at best kind of baffling and, at worst, a set of dumb odds that we’re all forced to play.

“Remember those old Choose Your Own Adventure books?”

This is now me speaking to an old friend over the weekend. He’s someone who is just a few years ahead of me in this whole great life process.

“Yup!” he replied instantly, “I loved ’em.”

“Well not me,” I stopped him, “I always managed to die after the second decision point in the chapter reading.”  Truly, I immediately rejected these books. I vividly remember the moment after trying to read one while sitting in our amazing Middle School library. It was about aliens that had fingernails that were like potato peelers. I died in the choices I made while navigating their strange galaxy. At that moment I surmised that if I continued to read these adventure books, odds were high that I’d never get to the end of them due to my inherent propensity for poor choices. I switched back to reading horse books.

Back to me mentioning the Choose Your Own Adventure books to my friend:

“Right now I feel like I’m at the end of one of those chapters, and instead of being forced with a “this” or “that” decision, instead I have a whole list. Looking at it all, I’m kind of overwhelmed.”

My friend totally got it, and it certainly helped that he and I came from the same kind of background.  For so much of my life—even before the professional part begin—I’ve just kind of fell into things. The choices were always pretty obvious to me, and the deciding factors were so compelling that it made any ensuing details a pleasure to wade through. I can imagine that I would have chosen to hop off at Ireland because the prospect was way more interesting than anything that the new world might have offered.  

And while I moon about what I might want to do in a future existence, I really don’t get too wrapped up in how one single choice might have a life-changing effect. It’s rarely so simple as choosing the ocean liner that is doomed to sink. Intellectually, I understand that there are so many unknowns along the way that simply can’t be accounted for. It’s the dumb luck aspect of it all. So it’s not so much the consequence that it’s stressing me out a bit. It’s rather this big weird lacuna that is opening up in front of me.

Existential quandaries like this one are kind of hard to talk about. I say this because I know that there are plenty of other humans out there who don’t have the luxury of choice. Not exactly the same thing, but it’s a bit like the bulk of the third-class passengers on board RMS Titanic. By the numbers, those are the folks who had packed their possessions and were set on starting a new life. And because of where they were housed on the ship, a high percentage of them were never rescued…and their odds for survival were not helped since the ship never once practiced an abandon ship drill. Life choices plus happenstance.  

I remember the day when I was working in a café on S. Leinster Street, the place that gave me pocket money, black coffee and free food while in college. It was the moment when I knew that I would be transferring to finish college in Ireland, and thus rip up more of my roots in favor of something that both scared and excited me. The oldest of the three sisters running the café was (rightfully) getting frustrated with me because I kept forgetting parts of orders. At the end of the shift, I went down to the break room where another sister sat, smoking a cigarette as you could do in those days.

“I’m sorry about today,” I said to her while untying my apron and removing my cap, “perhaps I’m just a little upset.”  

“Ah don’t worry about it too much,” she said, “and you didn’t look upset, just kind of…bemused.” 

Bemused. That totally was it. Bemused as I suddenly found myself waist-high in water and wading through a whole bunch of metaphorical reeds.  I could only keep going. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

I’d like to think that I’ve sharpened my inner divining rod in the decades since living in Dublin. And maybe I have, and maybe I haven’t. At this moment where I am now the same age as that chain smoking Irish woman, I can feel that sentiment returning. With a future undefined, with the only sure eventuality being that stuff is going to change. In the ensuing years, I guess what I have learned is not to zoom out so much and obsess about the potential ramifications of it all. Instead just continue to move forward, favoring the direction to what seems both exciting and perhaps a bit scary. The lifeboats, if they must be sought, will be dealt with when the time comes.