Have you ever wondered how life would be if you made a dramatic change, unaware of the consequences that may lay ahead? Wondering is one thing, but what about actually doing it?
Bernardo, friend and actor, has decided to make such a change. After a fantastic movie shoot in sunny California with a psychotic director who likes to have his actors sit in a dark house for three days with random insects flying around, he’s decided to move his life in a different direction.
And I’m all for it.
Bernardo wants to hurry and finish his theatre degree, move out of Houston, and pursue an acting career somewhere. Anywhere. It really doesn’t matter, as long as he’s doing what he really enjoys.
Which brings me to my own situation. When I was still in high school, I had always wanted to major in some sort of graphic design/marketing type degree that would somehow lead me in one of those dot-com firms doing lots of cool, cutting edge stuff. This soon became a distant dream when my parents informed me that they wouldn’t support me financially for college if I decided to take that route. Now I’m stuck going to a crappy school studying MIS, something, which I find, for the most part, extremely uninteresting. Am I looking for pity? No, but I’m making a point. What if I had decided to go the other route and actually get a design-related degree at some school? Maybe I’d actually have more creativity. Or maybe I’m thinking I’m not creative simply because of the fact that I didn’t learn it in a school, and I’m trying to do it on my own with no support. Maybe.
The point is, sometimes you have to reflect on how your life would be different if you had changed one significant aspect of it. The conversation with Bernardo made me think about that today. And if I had the guts to do it, I would do exactly what he did. But I don’t.
How ironic that tonight’s episode of Nip/Tuck was about the exact same thing. Julia finds out how her life would have been different if she had not left Christian for Sean. The result? She becomes a powerful, rich, plastic surgeon that ultimately is not as happy as she is with Sean. When she awakens from her dream, she realizes how much she loves Sean and loves the life she already leads.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could find out how changing our choices would have played out?