Too many versions.
That’s the issue.
Too many versions.
A week ago, I suddenly had this epiphany and thought I had broke through my writer’s block on the project I began in the summer. Except, this epiphany led to me trying to rewrite the entire story from the start. The only difference? Perspective.
That’s the crazy and complicated and beautiful thing: You can write the same story from a million perspectives. And it doesn’t even have to be different individuals. It can be the same person before and after a significant turning point in their life.
And such is the dilemma I am facing now.
I’ve been through something. Nothing traumatic. Simply upsetting. Just a five minute exchange over text. But it completely changed my life. It changed my perspective. And my perspective keeps changing.
Every time I try to write this story, the words that spill onto the page of a different taste. And how do I rectify it?
What if I don’t?
What if the solution to a problem is not fight or flight?
There’s a quote I saw on the wall of the place I used to work at a couple of years ago. And due to my strong sense of stubborness, I never once agreed with it. Until now.
What if a perceived problem isn’t a problem at all, but rather the solution to a previous problem?
Before I left for Winter Break, I decided to finally check out the library across my apartment building. I used to love going to the library back home and the one on campus has too many computers to be called a library. It doesn’t feel right. So I wanted a real library. Vintage sort.
And I’m scanning the titles and there it is, standing on the shelf, a sign:
I read this… how long ago? Two years.
My senior year of high school, I believe. Yes. I have vivid images of flipping through the pages on the bus to and from the local county college where I took a Creative Writing course. Before COVID hit, when we were still doing in-person classes that year.
And I remember thinking that the same two individuals living out three different versions of their lives was proof that circumstance and choices were all that stood in the way of a happy ending.
And I remember wondering how the same person could make such different choices given the same options.
One swerve.
That’s it.
You know, it’s interesting, if you take a piece of chalk and start drawing a line, you’ll end up in one place. You take that same piece of chalk and start drawing at the same point but your initial line is just one degree counter-clockwise to the first line you’ve already drawn. Just one.
And it’s so close. It almost overlaps. Someone could easily say you were trying to trace the original line and just made a mistake. But you begin extending that line and take it for several inches, then feet, then miles, and thousands of miles – and you end up in a different city.
Maybe even a different country or across the ocean.
And I’ve talked about choices a thousand times over. How our perceptions affect our choices which in turn affect our outcomes.
But before you get sick of my thoughts, let me draw the rest of the circle.
Because isn’t it so that whatever events you live as a consequence of your choices affect your mindset, emotions, perceptions, which then again lead to choices. Maybe your choices stay the same or change or maybe you choose to let someone else choose for you or let the world and life. But nonetheless it is affected.
There are infinite possibilities.
And infinite ways of telling the same story.
And isn’t that amazing…
