Musings on topics of small or large importance. Especially partial to subjects that include baby boomers, public figures, friends, Corporate America, the Denver Broncos, NASCAR, my previous home towns of New York City and Columbia (Maryland), stupidity (mine and others'), diets and health and who knows what else!

Saturday, January 27, 2007

If You Could Replay Your Life, Would You?

Jeff Winston suffered a deep, unfathomably searing pain at his desk at work and immediately died of a massive heart attack. He was 43. The next moment, he awakened in his college dorm room some 25 years earlier. He relived all those years only to die again on the same day at age 43. He kept waking up in his own life years earlier and kept trying to make sense of it as he soared, stomped, floated and trudged through the years.

There was his super rich life, his I'm-going-to-do-everything-right life, his decadent life, his fatherhood life, his scary life, his who-gives-a-shit life, his surprise life and many more. He tried to change history, he loved and played with many women, Every time he awoke again as a young man, he dreaded the years to come. Each time, he died on the same day. Would that go on forever?

Jeff Winston isn't a real person; he's the protagonist (remember that word from school? does anyone use it anymore?) in one of my favorite books of all time, Replay by Ken Grimwood. The book is copyright 1988 but I reread it every few years, as I just did for probably the 5th time. (If you decide to look up the book, DO NOT READ the summary from Publishers Weekly -- they give way too much away. Also, the cover shown is the original edition from 1988; the one they are selling now has a different cover, but it's the same book.)

It's a great book for putting everything in life in perspective. Here's the question I've let flow and trip over the virtual rocks in my mind: If I could replay my life, would I?

If I could replay it just once, I'd do just one thing differently, having to do with college. I went to Colorado State University, which at the time had 27,000 students enrolled. I've always wondered what would have happened if I'd chosen a medium-sized school, maybe in the Midwest. Or if I'd gone to Stanford, as a very bright, snobby fellow student urged me to do when he saw my SAT scores. 99th percentile for women in math, as I recall, and a pretty good score in the verbal or whatever they call it. Now I can hardly add two three-digit numbers together in my head -- kind of discouraging.

I think that one variation from the route I took would have changed everything. The wonderful movie "Run Lola Run" illustrated how some little tiny change, such as leaving 10 minutes later or stopping to let a car pass, could change your whole life. So going to a different university would certainly have taken my life in a different direction. I just don't know how.

Maybe I would have gotten married earlier than I did, and maybe it would have lasted longer than mine did. Maybe I would have had children, which I didn't and didn't want to in this series of life choices. Maybe I would have become a prominent something-or-other. Maybe I would have been a stay-at-home wife, sweetly and lovingly supporting my husband and his career. Sorry, I had a hard time typing that with a straight face. I've lived my life so "in control of my own destiny" without having to accommodate anyone else that I have a hard time imagining another path. Maybe I would be a drug addict, in prison or dead by now. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Meanwhile, here I am in this life, the result of my choices along the way. I only wonder about other choices when I read a book like Replay, and then it's fun to daydream. Just for a minute. Okay, now back to my life. It's a pretty good one just as it is.