Branches in the Sacred Timeline of Life

When I was young, I wanted to be a doctor. Cliché I know, but that’s what baby Shar wanted till age 12. But then in 6^th grade, science split into physics, chemistry and biology, and baby Shar threw her dreams of being a doctor out the window. I loved science but I loved social sciences more. I was called SST for a reason, mind you : p.

By the time, I reached 10^th I knew I was gonna pick up humanities in 11^th grade; I wanted to be a civil servant. IFS officer to be precise! I fueled that fire for four years, from 8^th to 12^th grade. I even wanted to pick up sociology in 11^th, but what I got was psychology. And as luck would have it, even though high school Shar wanted to be a civil servant, her newfound love for psychology was taking over. And by the time applications for under-graduation began to roll out, adolescent me had thrown her UPSC dreams out the window too.

Now I wanted to be a psychologist. I was good at the subject. I still am. But after three years of graduation, and months of constant rejection from every psychology department there is in the country, I realized that I never wanted to sit in a cubicle and work in the first place. I loved psychology as a science, but I loved the social part of that science more.

And once again, as destiny would have it, here I am finishing my post-graduation in social work. Young adult Shar has zero clues about her journey after graduation. But I wonder, what my life would have been if I had stuck to my original dreams.

If 6^th grade Shar’s dream had stuck on, she would have been on the way to become a cardiologist. If 12^th grade Shar’s dream had worked out, she would have been on the way to be a civil servant. If undergraduate Shar’s dream had come through, she would have been on the way to be a counselling psychologist.

I like to believe that in some alternative reality, these versions of me do exist, branches in the timeline as all MCU fans would agree. But why did they not come through, why did I not become who I ‘really’ wanted to be. Call it circumstance, fate or destiny, I like to call it evolution.

As we navigate from one day to another, we are not the same person that we used to be the day before. Life happens and we grow. Sometimes we wonder about these ‘what ifs’, ideal versions of our future that past versions of us had grown. It is okay to mourn the versions of us that we never came to realise. But we need to remember that we are not obliged to make every dream of ours come true.

Some dreams exist in our lives to give us hope for a while. And after we cross the threshold of that time, the dreams wither away too. I took my career trajectory as an example. But, the evolution of dreams happens in every aspect of our life. We love certain things and people growing up, but we lose touch with time.

Things that childhood versions of us wanted are sometimes not exactly what adult versions of us do. The core, of course, remains the same. I have always wanted to work for and with people and that’s what I still do.

As long as we stay true to who we want to be at the very core of our existence, how we achieve that version of ourselves is a matter of how we grow and evolve each day. The only person we are obliged to please is our present selves. As long as we are satisfied with who we are today, no matter our past expectations and our future possibilities, we are at a good place – the right branch in the sacred timeline of life.