I saw them while I waited at a red light—two guys in blue scrubs wrestling an ultrasound machine over the curb. They appeared to be transporting it from one medical building to the next while traffic zipped by on the main road. The machine nearly toppled as they maneuvered across the uneven sidewalks, and I saw them struggle to steady it and then pause to laugh in relief when they righted the equipment without falling over themselves.
When the traffic light turned green, I sped past them, and smiled at the memory of my own mishaps during the years I practiced as a nurse. I was twenty-one, entirely green myself, and in the wrong profession for someone with a slighty nervous constitution. My very first day on the floor of a hospital as a nursing student, I was the first to realize our patient had died mid-bed bath. This was not a mishap, but rather a tragic reality of life in the medical field. It was an inauspicious start to a short-lived career in the caring business.
The Scrubs struggling roadside reminded me of the life I could be having, the one I’d trained and studied four years to achieve, the life where I too wore a Littman stethoscope and oversized blue pants held together by a drawstring.
It’s complicated to be confronted with the life I could be having, while I’m busy living a different one. In this case, I’m happy my days as a nurse exist only in my memory. I rarely revisit those years. But, the same complex emotions rose when we visited our former hometown of London last summer, and again when I came across a few of my essays detailing the years we lived in Switzerland.
Those too are the lives I could be having. If we had chosen differently, I might still live in the terraced home with the blue door in southwest London. I might be a permanent resident of the city where my soul feels most at home, most itself, most at ease. I might run along the Thames and drink tea with a friend at Orange Pekoe and my children might call me Mummy.
Or I might have a view of the Swiss Alps while I cook schnitzel in the kitchen on Rohrstrasse. I might be a forever ex-pat who travels on weekends to France or Germany or Italy just for the heck of it. My kids might speak fluent German and I might eventually learn how to ski down a mountain without trembling. Maybe. Even that feels far-fetched for this dreamer.
When I think of the lives I could be living, they all seem to hinge on a single decision. In my memory, they appear to hang on a defined yes or no, when in reality it was a series of small decisions, a trail of choosing “the next right thing” that led me to choose my life today as a writer and adjunct professor living in the suburbs of New Jersey. I don’t have a view of the Alps, instead I have an ancient maple in the backyard that flames like a burning bush every autumn. I don’t run along the Thames, but I run past the tree my husband and I planted in our local park in honor of his late father. It is a sign we are rooted and committed to our life here.
My shadow self remains curious about all the lives I could have lived, even while I’m wildly grateful for the one I’m currently living. I don’t think this is a bad thing. It keeps me dreaming. It keeps my memories alive with all of the life I crammed into them over the past two decades. It keeps me aware of the small decisions I make daily. It keeps my heart open to possibility.
If you find yourself in a place of curiosity or confusion over what might have been or what comes next, might I make a recommendation? Emily Freeman’s podcast The Next Right Thing has helped me think about discernment and decision making in an entirely new way. I’m so excited that after seventy-six episodes, Emily’s next right thing was to write it all down in a book for us. The Next Right Thing releases April 2nd. Reading her book is my next step–perhaps it might be yours?
