In the mirror (facebook repost) in The irresistible urge to rant, riff and ramble

I was more upset than I expected when I realised that, money aside, I was not going to own a GT 86– that as a family man, it wasn’t happening.

It took me a long time to process that and figure out why.

Because, you see, for a moment I saw a me who could have owned it. An alternate me, who had made different choices in his life, regarding family and career. And behind him was another alternate me, and another one behind that, each one an outcome of a choice that I hadn’t made, or that I had made differently.

Probably a lot of them had a better life than me, too.

And what I felt wasn’t unhappiness, exactly.

Maybe it was resentment that I wasn’t all of them, or, more accurately, that I had never been given the chance to make an informed choice, because the universe had shaped me in such a way that every choice thay leads to the me standing here today, waving goodbye to the 86.

So I’m sitting in a laundromat next to Xueling(we missed breakfast at her childcare) listening to her chew noisily on a sandwich that wasn’t her first choice either because she couldn’t get egg.

And she says “This is really good too, Daddy. Look. There’s tomato in it.”

And Rain is coming to join us, and after that there will be hugs and promises to get her out from childcare as soon as we can.

And you know, maybe all the alternate me’s would kill to be here. Maybe they’re not happy either ( although I imagine taking the 86 out to Sepang on a track day might make up for a lot.)

Except that they wouldn’t even know I exist, because there is no prediction of my past that could see my little family here, in a quiet moment in Pandan listening to birdsong.

So it’s not bad here either.

Look. There are tomatoes in it.