The idea that any given decision you make has the potential to lead to completely different outcomes has always been one of the more interesting parts about life, but I’ve always been more interested in the idea that regardless of those choices, there are some things that were just always meant to happen.
Play Your Hand
There was a point in my teens when my best friend’s sister boldly claimed to him, “you picked the wrong Jaimee!”
It’s a funny memory to me. He had just started dating the only other Jamie in our school. We’d been best friends practically since birth, attached at the hip most of the time – people always said we would end up together.
It doesn’t matter that there was never any romantic feelings between the two of us and when I imagine the alternate reality where we did date, I never see it actually working out, especially now with how much we’ve both changed over the years. But the comment is something I always kind of swing back around to thinking about because, what if it is true that he was always meant to marry a Jai — er, Jamie?
What if the entire basis of our friendship rested on that fact that I happened to be given that name? As though somewhere deep in his subconscious, there was this inevitability and familiarity of it. If I had been named anything else, would we ever have formed such a close bond or survived as many years as we did?
We’ll never know for sure.
They’re married now with two kids and he and I don’t really talk anymore.
Stop Dragging Feet
And much like that, what if there doesn’t really exist a reality where I, Jaimee Eat World, never comes to fruition?
When I first discovered the band I was immediately hooked. Their music videos would stop me in my tracks and glue me to the screen and at night I’d scramble across the internet looking for more than just the singles that took over Canadian radio. They were the descriptor I’d Ask Jeeves for bands that “Sound Like”. None of its suggestions ever quite hit the mark.
While my tastes were varied and rarely ever wholly satisfied, very few other bands had such distinct impact – it was although there existed an invisible magnetic between them and I and even when I strayed, it would never be long before they pulled me right back.
As I told you on the last blog, I was about 15 when I concocted up this idea that I needed to visit Phoenix. I managed to evade it for 20 years. Even if it hadn’t been for my 36th birthday, it would have just happened eventually, I’m sure.
Maybe the only thing we don’t really have control over is the timing.
Wind Your Watch
I guess that’s why it doesn’t serve any of us to dwell over what’s happened or how and the myriad of ways we could have responded differently to situations we wish we could change. Even if we could, we might still be dissatisfied with the subsequent outcomes because where there is a potential for it to be better, there’s also potential for it to be worse.
Ultimately, buried inside of us is a blueprint we cannot access and I think that’s probably for our own benefit and protection.
I generally consider myself to be someone with a particularly good memory – it is highly detailed and most often I can bring myself right back to particular moments and feel them as though they’re happening right here and now. But I also carry moments that have been almost wiped clean entirely from my slate. When I think about those moments and the ones that surround them, I am certain this is for my protection. If I remember them wholly, I’m not positive I can confidently handle the full reality of their history. And why should I have to suffer them again, what would be the point?
I imagine if that fail-safe exists in our memory banks for moments in the past, then the great motherboard of our universe that allows the world to run at all has also implanted a certain mechanism to block or blackout the direct pathways that lead to the places we are destined to travel.
And that is to benefit our sense of wonder and imagination because nobody likes when you spoil the story.
Jaimee Eat World 
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