What logical chain of cause and effect led you to an unexpected place in your life?

Few of us actually seem to lead predictable lives: dull, sometimes, perhaps, but not predictable. Rather, one thing leads to another, and we often end up in places and situations that we never imagined. But on looking back, we can see how they came about, step by step or cataclysm by cataclysm.

Can you trace a series of steps in your life that led from a point A to a completely unforeseen point B? The idea of this question is to recognize the connections and see how one led to the next—maybe not inevitably, but logically.

For instance: when I was in high school, the popular choices for fulfilling the language requirement were Spanish and French, but I took German. My German teacher read the Boston Herald, whereas we were a Globe family. So when the Herald published an article about a search for scholarship candidates to a Midwestern college, I wouldn’t have seen the article, but she did, clipped it, and gave it to me; and I became one of the three winners for New England.

I had had other plans; but I accepted the full scholarship and went there.

My choice of college definitely affected my career path and became, as for so many, a significant determiner of the course of my life.

Please note, this is not about karma or luck or God’s plan. It’s just about how cause and effect can produce surprising but logical results—and about tracing one of those chains in hindsight in our own lives.

 
Tags as I listed them: logic, cause and effect, chain reactions, personal history, life’s surprises.