But, I guess I’m not the kind of person who has a dedicated goal, and strives for it, but slide into things I like, and good things have come from that.

I’m exactly the same way and it’s worked out well so far, despite all the self-help gurus who tell you that you must set goals, strive for them, update them every so often, etc.

I think what’s helped me in life is that I’m eager to take (reasonable, thought-out) chances when they arise, I’m curious and I’m a natural optimist. Everything else has pretty much followed from those traits.

In terms of thinking that life’s events are scripted by a deity, that falls apart with the least bit of scrutiny. For instance, through a series of happenstances, I turned onto a busy residential street a couple days ago that I almost never drive on. There, I discovered a toddler standing in the middle of the road, unattended. I pulled into his driveway, noticed his backyard gate was open, collected him and knocked on the front door. His mother answered, dismayed to see him, and nearly in tears when I told her he’d been standing in the road (this is on a wicked blind turn).

So, through a bunch of coincidences, I was in the right place at the right time. If I hadn’t driven past at that moment, another car may well have flattened him 30 seconds later. God’s providence?

It might sound that way to a congregation willing to suspend disbelief if I got up on Sunday and “testified.” But what about the couple in the audience whose own child was struck and killed by a car last year, or 10 years ago, or 50 years ago? Why wasn’t god protecting that child? It’s hurtful and makes no sense to try and ascribe good things to god’s will if we can’t also do the same with bad things.

By the way, I believe there’s another Karen posting here recently (hi Karen!). I’m the Original Karen from the OTM DB and CaTE.

Anyhow, I’ve been going over my life and I’m having trouble coming up with “sliding doors” moments around which that the rest of my life has pivoted. I can’t help but wonder if this has more to do with a metaphor I was given as a teenager by one of my father’s friends than any actual difference in my life (okay, maybe being given this metaphor is one of those moments).

Anyhow, my father’s friend told me that there are two kinds of fear. There is the kind of fear that gets you out of the way of the speeding bus (he said “gets you out of the way of the charging water buffalo” if you like that imagery better). This is simple “fight or flight” fear. Then there is the kind of fear that you have to follow right to its source–and if you do, it will lead you to your greatness.

Okay, it’s kind of granola. But I have to say that it has given me the courage to take the many “leaps of faith” that I’ve taken that have helped me get where I am-presenting at the Cognitive Science Society as an undergrad after the first two authors couldn’t make it, taking on an executive director position with no salary, quiting my fairly well paying programming job to take on the ED position full-time when we were finally able to pay a meager salary, remaining silent after saying “would you consider a pledge of $5,000 this year?” Clearly lots of people do more courageous things without my silly metaphor–indeed, I think Hemant already has. But thinking about fear in this way has really helped me make big decisions in my life. Perhaps it’ll be useful to you, too.

Well, I’ve made a couple of choices recently that may end up changing my life. I signed up for an ecology course at the college I attend, and I also watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I actually did the former before I did the latter, because of something I saw in my biology textbook while studying for my final exam in General Biology II, and also because it was the only biology course avialible during the summer semester, but doing the latter has made me even more sure that ecology is important, I am currently planning on going into microbiology and biochemistry but who knows, maybe the movie and the ecology course will change my mind and divert my path down a completely different road I never would have considered taking previously.

I spent the first 3 years of college in 1 major then completely switched from sciences to humanities. When adding up the credits to see when I’d have enough to graduate I figured I needed 4 more semesters.
Here’s the math error: I actually could have finished in 3 and considering the money/tuition situation, would have done so.

But, due to my math mistake I pulled one more semester.

During that semester I started dating the woman to whom I have been happily married for the past 10 years.

Our lives are influenced both by the big conscious decisions we make as well as the random events that we may never be aware of. We tend to focus on the conscious, self-defining moments in our lives, because it makes us feel more powerful and in control. But a disconcertingly large portion of the paths we end up taking are dictated by small pebbles under our feet. I’ll share one of each.

The random one: My college roommate off-handedly invited me on a blind date. His girlfriend and her roommate whom I had never met were going to cook dinner. My roommate’s suggestion was whimsical, and my taking him up on it was whimsical. I had nothing better to do that night. That dinner initiated an uninterrupted 37 years with the most remarkable woman I have ever known, and probably ever will. It was the luckiest moment in my life.

The random and chosen one: My dad was in the hospital with alcoholic cirrhosis. I went to my psychopathology class and the lecture featured the early stages of alcoholism. In the middle of class I suddenly saw that my own behavior was on a continuum that would inexorably lead to the same hospital bed where my dad was lying. That lecture initiated an uninterrupted 25 years of sobriety. I doubt that I would be alive today if I had continued on my previous path. Sparked by a random conjunction of events, I consciously made an important decision. It was the wisest moment in my life.

Without the comforting explanation of God’s intervention, we have to face the reality that even our most deliberate decisions are brought before us at least in part by mindless chance, following chaotic chains of cause and effect. For me, I can still feel great gratitude for the outcomes of my life, even though I don’t express that gratitude to a divine source of my good fortune.