Do you ever wonder who else you might have been?

It is tempting to read our histories backward and discover a destiny that ruled. I had to be this me, with these traits and attributes, because of my nature, circumstances, and hour. We long for the pious satisfaction of the great Shaker hymn:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published’Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be;And when we find ourselves in the place just right,’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

We may relate our journey as a story into which the pieces, however varied, fit, the conclusion of which convinces like a concerto’s closing chord.

But that’s nonsense and we know it. Happenstance, not providence, produced this result. Parents, gender, race, nationality, birth order, acquaintances, teachers, opportunities, collisions determined our direction like a clicking billiard ball. If my dad hadn’t died young, if I hadn’t been seated at a dinner beside the woman who became my wife, if her tire hadn’t gone flat, if I’d boarded that plane that went down, if business results had been different, if my younger son hadn’t gotten sick, if I hadn’t encountered Jane during an intermission, if her husband had been well, if, if, if, a blizzard of maybes, any one of which might have altered all. Bad breaks I rued in hindsight seem lucky since I like where I ended up. What if a certain lady had said yes to my infatuated appeal! What if I’d skipped that colonoscopy because I was too busy! What if!

We deny our dependence on chance to protect our pride. How heroic to harrumph:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI am the captain of my fate,I am the master of my soul.

Young Ernest Henley wrote that famous awful poem after he’d lost one leg to osteomyelitis and was at risk of losing his second. He needed bucking up. Give him credit for turning lemons into lemonade. But a cheerleader’s half-time exhortations differ from sober truth. Shakespeare got it more right:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAs flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;They kill us for their sport.

Actuality humiliates, so we delude ourselves. When I write well, I think I was born for this. To pursue my destiny vigorously is my moral obligation – so get out of my way! Humiliation and humility tussle for my soul. Not even Shakespeare was born to be Shakespeare. What if his first play had flopped? What if Anne Hathaway had her way and summoned him home for baby duty?

I am grateful for my life each day, grateful to be fishing in my brain to bring you these thoughts, grateful for your attention, and for my bride. None of these blessings do I take for granted – when I’m thinking straight. But I’m also susceptible to grandiosity, pomposity, preposterously inflated self-regard. I medicate myself with scowling words – I am doing it now – but their therapeutic effect wears off and I must re-treat (as opposed to retreat).

I like to think if accident had steered me differently, I’d have embraced my chance forcefully, for that is my nature. Also poppycock. Every human has their breaking point. “Too long a sacrifice,” wrote Yeats, “Can make a stone of the heart.” If my mind broke like my younger son’s, a victim of paranoid schizophrenia, would I have found the strength to go on?

These truths are so familiar I blush to recite them. Yet we contrive to forget them. We gloat, boast, flaunt, swagger, swank, spurn the less fortunate, extol winners as seers. Even the modest blazon their achievements as their own. We can’t help ourselves.