Do you ever think about the little things, the details that make up the decisions, actions and reactions in our life? Do you ever wonder how so many tiny, insignificant occurrences can be the ones that ultimately shape who we become?

Example: My girlfriend and I started dating after a party during our senior year of college. We’d known each other all semester, admired one another from afar but never talked much one-on-one before that night. The thing is, I almost didn’t go to the party at all.

It was the end of the semester and I had my last class the following morning. I had to be in attendance or I was forfeiting my credits for the course. At the last moment, I decided I’d go but I wouldn’t stay long. Long story short, we ended up talking until morning, though neither of us knew what it meant at the time. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, and the fact that we same so close to missing out on all of it is humbling.

Example: My current job is the result of two things: a conversation I had with a co-worker at my previous job and a layoff about a month after the conversation. Both the conversation and the layoff almost didn’t happen.

We were on our way back from a story assignment, one that had been rescheduled twice and had nearly been canceled altogether. Save for a last-ditch effort to make the story happen, we never would have been in my car driving back that day, discussing his wife’s job. Two months later, his wife was interviewing me to be her co-worker.

Why was I being interviewed? Because a few weeks after that conversation, I was laid off as part of a staff reduction at our newspaper. The company needed to lose two employees, and they had no preference. We were all given a week to decide whether we would take a severance package and leave the newsroom. If they didn’t get two volunteers, they would start with the shortest length of tenure. Um, “Calling the kid straight out of college…you’re fired.” One co-worker knew immediately that she would take the package, but it wasn’t until the day before decisions had to be made that I knew someone else was considering it.

“Take it, take it!” I secretly willed him. He was a friend and I liked him, but I was desperate to stay in work. Eventually he decided he had a new family to support and he had to stick around. I respected that, but still got cut. A month later I was in my new position, and six months after that he was laid off anyway. Neither of us had any idea at the time how much uglier the industry was about to get. He’s still struggling to find the right fit and I just passed my first anniversary with my current employer. I’ve felt guilty ever since about the way it transpired, but I can’t avoid the fact that a lot of small stars aligned to lead my life’s path.

More than just the guilt, one has to wonder how things might have been different, good or bad, if just a detail here and a mindless decision there had been made otherwise. It can become too much if you let it.

The small things are what this blog is all about at its core. I’ve written so much in the past year about the way things have been in my past, while so much of my life is thinking about what’s here and now and what’s to come. If I’ve learned anything along the way, it should probably be that I can fret about the past and plan for the future all I want, but none of it will mean anything if the Chinese food I ate for lunch today somehow becomes the catalyst for the life I’ll be leading in 30 years. As frustrating as that might be, it’s also pretty damn comforting. Something about just going out there, doing what we do and seeing where it ends up sounds nice, even if it means giving up control.

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