Choices

Once you attain a certain number of years, you gain the ability to divine which of the choices you made during your life had the greatest impact. Over the decades, I have made many choices, some good, many bad, but only one momentous.

Those who know me might assume it was the decision to be a writer, but that fails on two counts. First of all, what makes you think I had a choice? Writing choses you, not the other way around. It’s a sort of mental illness that only intense psychoanalysis and/or drug therapy can treat. The rest of us simply succumb. Now, if something I had written turned into a best-seller and was picked up by Hollywood, and I had been jetted off to Tinsel Town to write the screenplay and rub elbows with the shiny people and subsequently developed a cocaine habit and was found one morning—after a monumentally debauched weekend—floating face-down in Keira Knightley’s swimming pool then, yeah, I’d say being a writer changed the arc of my life dramatically, But as it is, not so much.

Getting married? Having children? Getting divorced? Becoming entangled with SWMNBN (She Who Must Not Be Named)? Escaping from SWMNBN? Any one of those decisions might be contenders, but prior to all of that, I was living in the Albany area, working for the State of New York, and after the dust settled, I was still living in the Albany area, working for the State of New York. So, no.

The momentous choice, made on a whim during a boring afternoon in July when I was sixteen years old, was to take up a musical instrument. I had in mind to learn the flute (summer vacation was ten weeks long, and there was often little to occupy one’s time) but upon leafing through the Sears and Roebuck catalogue (some clichés are there for a reason) I found that a flute would set me back $124 and, at that time, it may just as well have been a million. So, instead, I bought a guitar for $30. And that changed the course of my life more than any other choice I have ever made.

After spending about three weeks driving my family crazy, I finally learned a few chords, and then a few more. My fingers stopped throbbing and, eventually, I didn’t suck. Being involved in The Cult at that time, I soon found myself playing at Christian Coffeehouses and informal church services. And I found I like performing.

After my excommunication, I continued to play, but had no opportunities to perform. Then one day, years later, I happened to be in a bar where a guy was playing guitar and singing, and I realized he wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t do. The bar had an open mic night. I signed up. Six months later I was performing. For several years I played two to four nights a week and, as there were a large number of Irish bars in the Albany area, I played a lot of Irish music. As a direct result of this, I was repeatedly exposed to Irish Step Dance, which I found appealing. So appealing that, when I saw an introductory class for it in a local adult education magazine, I immediately signed up.

I loved it, and spent three years on the Irish Dance circuit, winning medals and becoming more and more steeped in Irish culture, which I found appealing. So appealing that I booked a trip to Ireland. And it was there that I met my wife.

The result of that, naturally, was moving to England, where I currently live, and have done for the past twenty years.

I know it seems a little far-fetched to lay all this on choosing to take up the guitar, but there truly is a clear line from that moment to where I am now, which is far and away from where I would have been if I had not made that choice.

Because I took up the guitar, I have seen much of the UK, and Ireland, and some of Spain, France, and Germany, as well. I’ve seen the Rock of Gibraltar, I’ve been down a salt mine near Krakow, I’ve walked along the Champs-Élysées, and I have experienced Auschwitz.

So, be mindful of the choices you make, for they can have far-reaching, unexpected outcomes. And though some of them may be very pleasant, you also stand the chance of ending up face-down in Keira Knightley’s swimming pool.