So much has happened.
I remember last year around this time, or two months before it, when I was applying for university. University of Toronto Mississauga was one choice. The other one I took seriously was Ryerson. For acting.
At the Ryerson audition, I was among all the applicants, and I remember the room so well. We had to perform two things: a play shortened to two minutes, and a monologue. I’d prepared my monologue well in advance and polished it and worked on it for weeks. (Later, this same monologue, when I performed it in drama class, got an A. It was from Shakespeare.)
So I got up and did my play—Chekhov’s “The Seagull” in three minutes. The audience laughed a lot. Another person also did The Seagull and mine went over at least as well; even the director we were auditioning for laughed.
... But just before I did my monologue, something clicked in my head. I thought, "I should improvise a monologue. These people are clearly into funny things more than serious ones." I felt the decision very strongly and didn’t think a second time. So I did it, I made it up as I went.
It was... meh.
I wouldn’t even repeat it now for you.
But it seemed like such a good idea.
And what’s happened since? I was turned down by Ryerson. I went to UTM. I took all kinds of classes, some of which really meant a lot to me. I spent countless hours in the car, talking to my brother and my mum. I met a ton of people -- and friends. I did challenging work and had the occasional epiphany at school. In short, I went on a new course in life and changed from who I was to who I am. And I am vastly different in some ways than I was before all this.
Why?
Because of two seconds, and not more, when I thought, “I should improvise this thing.”
Two seconds decided this entire last year, from the people I now happily call my friends, to the amazing things I’ve learned, to the person I’ve become.
(Of course maybe I wouldn’t have made the program anyway... but hey, Peters had faith in that monologue!)
And looking back at the end of this year, all I can think is,
maybe it wasn’t so stupid to have (accidentally!) thrown the audition after all.
It’s been good.
Neat -- it's as though your gut (or some other cosmic source of prodding) already knew which university was best for you.
ReplyDeleteIf quantum mechanics is correct, in parallel universes, there are copies of you that attend Ryerson. There are also copies of me that did ask [her] out, copies that never moved from Kingston to Nobleton, copies that never moved from Nobleton to Sarnia, copies that attend Western instead of Waterloo, copies that never told my parents about their hearing loss, copies that never had any hearing loss at all, copies that decided not to brush their teeth yesterday morning, etc. I often wonder what my life would be like had only one of these conditions been different, but imagine all the variations!
Time to brush my teeth.
What an interesting thing to wonder about! One of the changes I think of instantly is, What if one's parents had gone to different places when they would otherwise have met? -- Would any part of the "myself" consciousness carry over to the any children they have with other people (to which parent would one belong?!) ; would their child[ren] be someone else entirely, i.e. you had never existed? ; or ... who knows?
ReplyDeleteLater, searching for deeper meaning, I was trying to puzzle over "which version is Selected" (say, "to be the real one" or "to receive my consciousness"), before realizing that obviously that question is meaningless in quantum mechanics... Of course there would be other Lukes and Jons (if they haven't died yet), experiencing their variation and living through it; and this worries me, since frankly, I don't trust other-me to run other-my lives! :P
I was thinking about this episode of Doctor Who when I was writing my comment, and WHAM-O! Wouldn't you know it, it was the episode that was shown last night on re-runs! The plot is a bit fanciful (or, as The Doctor would say, "Fantastic!"), but still somewhat relevant.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day_%28Doctor_Who%29
But you raise an interesting point about consciousness, and I had wondered about that too. I don't think that one of these children would have my consciousness per se, but I do have the suspicion that half of their interests/personality would be similar to mine, by way of the common parent's genes.
Something interesting that my Mom mentioned today: it might have been a good thing that they found the tumour with this year's CT scan, even though it should have been noticed on last year's CT scan. This is because last year, around this time, was when Uncle Brian committed suicide, and we probably wouldn't have been able to deal adequately with either fiasco had they been happening at the same time. But then, this begs the question, how would Uncle Brian have reacted to the news of my tumour?
Would it have depressed him even more? Would he still have attempted suicide when I would have been in the hospital? Or (sorry if this sounds arrogant), since I've dealt with my fiasco pretty well, would I have set a positive example in the midst of his depression?
And so on. No point in spending time thinking about that, though.