The Index Card

Please accept my apologies in advance, dear readers, if today’s blog is reminiscent of an episode of The Wonder Years.

First, a dilemma:
a)  Are our lives pre-determined, mapped out on some divine path where our fate is cast from the moment we take our first breath?

or

b)   Do we make a thousand choices everyday that ultimately dictate our life’s direction?

To answer ‘A’ implies there is order. It suggests a controlling agent (Higher Being/Cosmos/God etc) that conducts a universal orchestra and we all are destined to arrive on our cue, to give a blast on the trumpet, and therefore play our part in some perfect, metaphysical symphony.

To answer ‘B’ means that we are all driving the bus. Hold on, change that to driving our OWN bus. We can go left when we want, stop when we want. We can reserve the right to refuse passengers and tap the DO NOT DISTRACT DRIVER WHILE BUS IS MOVING sign when necessary.

If you are just coming in from a hard day’s slog and can’t be arsed to ponder such philosophical questions- relax. I’ve thought it through and I have AN answer if not necessarily THE answer. Let’s say I have the answer for me.

In short, we need a ‘C’ option: all of the above. ‘A’ and ‘B’ are both correct. Allow me to illustrate...

It was Autumn 1983. Kenny and Dolly had the number one song (we rely on each other, ah ha...from one lover to another ah-ha). The pubs and bars shared a common soundtrack of PacMan suddenly turning tail and chasing ghosts. People stood outside the cinema debating whether to see Scarface or Flash Dance; worried that there would be a shortage of Cabbage Patch Dolls to meet the upcoming Christmas demand.

Meanwhile, a young teaching student was sat in a long-forgotten final year teaching class, focussed on some long-forgotten educational theory.  He was 7 months away from graduation and had already begun to think about what he would do in the wider world. Florida was one option on the table but he had the travel-bug. Exploratory discussions with the Peace Corps had proved interesting and if forced to make a decision that cold autumn day, he would have most likely found himself in the heat of Africa by the close of 1984.

The class ended. Usually the young man would walk across the main college quadrant on his way back to the halls of residence. But as it was unseasonably cold, he elected to take an alternative route; through the Science Block’s long ground floor corridor that emptied quite close to his dorm. It was not his normal habit, but it would be vastly warmer than negotiating the frigid quadrant. With that simple decision, the rest of his life changed.

University notice boards are a free-for-all. There is no common-sense to their organisation or context, nor to their presentation. There is no hierarchy to signal what is important and what is frivolous. Sheets of paper flap in the breezy wake left by passing students inviting the occasional focussed eye to: LEARN TO PLAY GUITAR or IMPROVE YOUR GRADES FRENCH LIT TUITION AVAILABLE FROM 4.0 STUDENT or SIGN UP FOR LAKESIDE DORM SOFTBALL TEAM.

The young student had seen the index card from 15 feet away. It was partially hidden behind a larger flyer that had been posted afterwards. The card filled his right eye’s field of vision and drew him in as if it was a lamp on a pitch-black runway. It was simple, even non-descript. To the countless thousands of students passing that day it was meaningless and didn’t register in their consciousness.

The student jotted down the number on the back of his hand. He phoned that evening and was invited to meet the programme’s organisers. Countless interviews followed during the coming weeks. The young man went and answered the organiser’s questions, more for the experience than anything else. Christmas came and went (he didn’t want a Cabbage Patch doll anyhow). By the third week of January he was on an airplane heading off to London: never calling anywhere else home thereafter.

Do I need to state the obvious and reveal: I know because I was that young man?

So my life’s direction, my family, my work, my home and all that defines me is owing to a 3”x5” index card buried beneath scraps of paper.

Returning to our original dilemma, dear readers, one could argue that ‘B’ is in fact, the answer. I CHOSE to take a different route down the ground floor corridor. I CHOSE to stop and take note of the crowded notice board. I CHOSE to jot down the phone number on the card. I CHOSE to contact the organisers. I CHOSE to go to the series of interviews. I CHOSE to abandon my plans for Miami or Africa once the offer of England was on the table. I CHOSE to remain in a country 3000 miles from the place I was born.

But can any of us dismiss ‘A’ outright, the notion that perhaps an omnipotent hand was at work that day; corralling me into a pre-determined direction? What would have happened if it had been unseasonably warm that autumn day and I elected to undertake my default route across the quadrant?  If I had dropped my books and become distracted as I approached the bulletin board? If it had been raining and the drops washed the inky phone number from my hand?

I believe that things happen for a reason. Such a belief requires faith; subscribing to what we cannot empirically see but can innately feel. Some would call that a crutch, a cop-out, an over-simplified means of ordering our existence. I have no proof to the contrary. But equally, I cannot explain why that insignificant little index card, hidden behind flashier, more aesthetic adverts, caught my eye as I passed at speed from 15 feet, 10 feet, 5.  

I equally believe that within that Grand Design, we make choices; hundreds, maybe thousands of choices each day. But our choices make for minor detours en-route to our ultimate destination. That being, I was always going to England. I was always going to come here, settle, meet the love of my life, have children and re-build schools. I was going to England when I woke up that cold autumn morning; I was going to England at my 5^th birthday party. I was going to England in the womb.

Whatever the answer, my life was changed forever by a 3x5 index card. Five words and a phone number set a series of episodes in motion that are still unfolding nearly 30 years later. I wish I had kept the card as I would most certainly have it framed somewhere on my wall. I would point at it and tell the story set in 1983. I would dust off the frame and call the card the doorway to my adult life, landing squarely and 100 feet tall in my path of the day, daring me to turn the door handle. I would polish the glass and call it a holy relic, an instrument of God.

As I write my wife is asking if I want to have curry or tacos for dinner. I pause before answering as my choice could possibly change everything. I peer out the window and look to heaven for a divine sign.  A plane has left Heathrow and is climbing though the London sky. For some reason I know it is going to Mexico.

Keep the Faith,

The Head