Defining Moments

This week, I played ‘Detroit: Become Human’. It’s a game set in distant future in which human-like robots (Androids) are available to do all the menial jobs. They are highly intelligent, almost perfect. But eventually, they gain free will and do not want to be slaves anymore.

You play as three of those robots and all you have to do is to make choices. Choices like “should I open the door?”, “should I ask this question?”, or “should I kill this person?”. Every choice you make moves the story forward in a certain direction and eventually leads to a unique ending.

It is one of the most thrilling games I ever played. The reason is that unlike most games, this one has consequences. If you fail a mission, you fail for real. If you make a wrong choice, your character might die. Take enough wrong decisions and you inevitably face a sad ending. The game is absolutely unforgiving.

At the end of each chapter, the game displays a flow chart that embodies the series of events that happened and the events that could have happened. The could have happened part is what intrigues me.

This chart, in my opinion, is a nice way to visualize the trajectory of life. It gets me thinking of all the choices I have made until this point in time, and what could have happened if I decided otherwise.

I wonder how my life would have looked like if I had said yes to that dream job. Or if I took a year off from college like I was thinking during the pandemic. Or if I had never traveled to Bangkok.

Of course, thinking about what-could-have-beens is not a good practice. What doesn’t hurt though is envisioning the long term outcomes of your decisions. I think we underestimate how much change a certain choice can bring to the trajectory of our life.

Let alone the big, monumental decisions. Even simple choices like how you spend your day; who you spend it with; what you eat for lunch; what time you wake up; create a butterfly effect that shapes your life five years from now.

Each moment is, in fact, a defining moment. Maybe we don’t see it now, but our life is splitting into multiverses of could-have-beens with each passing moment. It’s only up to us to choose the universe we’re proud of.

Wishing you a future in which you’re happier with what happened than what could have been.

What’s the hardest choice that you ever made?

Good day,
Aachman