What are your "Turn Left" moments?

[K'Ehleyr]

Oh, oh, I know this and have pondered on it muchly.

The phrase that turned my life left was "as a couple". A brewery took over the pub where myself and a fairly recent boyfriend were working, near on 20 years ago. When I was interviewed I was asked if they wanted me to be taken on alone as I'd 'qualified' or if we came 'as a couple'.
If I'd said 'alone' I would not have the wonderful (?!) Son I have, but would not have had such a rocky ride ~ maybe?

I do wonder where I'd be if I'd said 'alone'.

 

[Finn]

Personally, the big one probably would be getting my dog. It set off a chain of situtations that pressured me into moving from Cincinnati to the DC area when I did. I always wanted to move away from Cincinnati but without the real Finn I wouldn't have pushed myself to move as early as 2006 (the year I met my now fiancee). I actually was on the fence about getting a pup let alone a Beagle pup as I drove toward the breeder where he was born. It was my dog that helped my fiancee notice me not long after I lost my job, before I went back to school. You see, without the real Finn, I would be in a different place.

Oh yeah, and I'd be using a different username here.

 

[the 4th hanson bro]

June 1990, I took my grandmother home to eastern Colorado following a knee replacement. I stayed for dinner, visited with aunts, uncles, and cousins and then got into the car to make the 150 mile drive back to Denver. Before I got on the highway, I stopped at the QuikStop to get a coke and a snack for the drive. Spent less than 2 minutes in the store.

Got on the highway and was making good time. I noticed the clouds building and it getting darker. The rain started and started getting heavier, then the hail started and started getting bigger. The hail got to be softball size and I was waiting for the windshield to blow out.

I crested a small hill east of Limon, and saw what turned out to be an F3 tornado bearing down on the highway about a half mile to mile in front of me. It crossed the highway, took a tractor-trailer rig off the overpass and set it down on the highway, facing the right direction. It was still hailing so getting out of the car wasn't an option.

Where would I have been had I not stopped for the coke?

 

[Trekker4747]

It kind of makes me think of a scene in the first episode of the Canadian TV Series "Being Erica."

The premise of the show is that a 30-something woman who's pretty much gone nowhere in her life despite having a Masters in Writing/English. She's single and working dead-end jobs. A "Therpaist" contacts her and gives her the chance to go back in time, assuming the body of her past-self, and make changes to her life by fixing past regrets. (It turns out these past regrets end-up having no real meaningful change to her future other than making her as an adult make changes to her present life.)

Anyway, in the first episode she's sent back some-16 years to 1992 as her 16 year-old self to relive a "regret" she had at a high-school dance (she got really drunk, embarassed herself in front of the whole school and never got to make-out with/sleep with her then boyfriend who broke up with her the week after the dance.) She's obviously shocked and at one point encounters the "Therpaist" -assuming the role of a hot-dog vendor in the past- she argues with him about changing the past saying if her not getting drunk wouldn't cause World War Three or some other major event to happen to the future. The Therapist responds with something like, "Could be. Or is it possible that your alcohol consumption at a school-dance, while very important to you, will have no impact on world events?"

That scene kind of made me nod whenever I hear/read stories like this (in sort of a looking-back and reflecting way) that minor changes in individual lives wouldn't necessairly have huge changes to the world's future. Unless, of course, you're a world leader or something like that it's unlikely anything you do in your life will have any impact on the rise and fall of nations and civilization.

 

[Finn]

^Long term, it might. One of my descendants may play a pivotal role in the 31st Century. Or one of my distant descendant hooked up the parents of the guy who finally set up everlasting peace in the Middle East.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

Just the other day I was driving and because I was focused on my driving, I avoided running over a small kid who darted out in front of me on his bike. I saw him ride behind a parked car and anticipated him coming out in front of me from the other side, and sure enough, he did.

I can only imagine what would have happened had I been distracted by something or had just not been aware of the kid being there...all I can say is my life (and his) would be very different right now.

 

[chrisspringob]

^Long term, it might. One of my descendants may play a pivotal role in the 31st Century. Or one of my distant descendant hooked up the parents of the guy who finally set up everlasting peace in the Middle East.

If we're talking long term, then minor events in any of our lives can easily determine who even exists a thousand years from now. I mean, consider the improbability of any of us existing. It's not just that your parents had to meet and eventually have sex to produce you. But a very specific egg of your mother had to join with a very specific sperm of your father. Any tiny variation in their lives up to that point, and a different genetic combination of the two of them would have become their child rather than you. Multiply that effect over many generations, and it's easy to see how minor decisions in your own life today could greatly influence who's alive a thousand years from now.

This is why the "Mirror, Mirror" episodes of Star Trek are so unrealistic. Why would any of the same characters exist in a universe in which all of human history had been different?

 

[Yeoman Randi]

My turn left moment was disobeying my parents and going outside as a young child. If I had stayed inside (or at least thought about it for another 15 seconds), I would not have been run over by a lawn tractor and lost my right arm.

.

Whoa.

 

[Emher]

I've definetly had a quite a few. But of the bigger ones was quiting my last really steady job in November 2006. One one hand I'm glad I did it since I hated the job, and pay was kinda eh. But on the other hand I've pretty much been in financial trouble ever since. Would it have been better for me to stay in that job for a while and not just quit without anything new, or have the turmoil been good for me? In some ways it has but I'm sure as hell wouldn't have minded the lessened stress.

 

[Candlelight]

One easy one I remember is on the day I was due to take a flight exam for part of my pilot's license I was asked to play a hockey game as someone was injured. I thought about it and eventually said YES.

During the game I broke my finger, had to go to the emergency room and missed the exam. Weeks after that, events which began on that Saturday began pushing me away from flying until finally I was forced to give it up, and eventually down the path of working in television.

Had I said NO, my future would've been heaps different.

 

[ancientone51]

Several weeks back I started a 16 week course on Tuesdays to do the new TTCC requirement for some of us old foggy teachers at my school.

I dropped it after the first meeting.

A week later I was at the meeting for a Traveling Vietnam Wall exhibit and am now doing the keynote speech on Mother's Day.

Also, hubby's death on a Tuesday...had more Tuesday nights with him.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

^ "We are all connected."

I sometimes wonder about the limits to the Butterfly Effect. I mean, everyone always focuses on the butterfly flapping and the subsequent typhoon happening in Japan, but what about the times the butterfly flaps and the outwards causality ripple is curtailed after almost no wider repercussions?

What governs the limits? Is it chance or are there a set of natural laws governing just how much chaos is allowed in the universe? Maybe we're only probabilistically all connected some of the time? I know virtually no advanced maths, so won't even hazard a guess to any of these answers, but I vaguely sense there must be some sort of stochastic calculus governing these sorts of issues.

They also talk about the butterfly not giving birth to other butterflies, which leads to generations of butterflies not being born. But, on the other hand, that butterfly dying could lead to another butterfly having more food (or being harder to find because there are more butterfly hiding spaces or something) and she survives when she should have died. It's possible the universe could course correct itself on the small things.

The actual question is far more personal (and, in people's lives, small things could make big differences). I'm trying to think of a good example for me, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment. Definitely some good ones in this thread.

 

[Jadzia]

^ More butterflies --> more food for butterfly eating predators --> more butterfly eating predators --> less butterflies.

The population is self stabilizing. The theory of predator prey models was developed by Andrey Kolmogorov, one of the greatest Soviet Russian mathematicians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka–Volterra_equation#Kolmogorov_predator-prey_model

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Yeah, that's why I feel the butterfly effect example of the butterfly was poorly chosen.

BTW, while not my story, it is completely fitting, so I'll repeat it. When my Dad was in college, he wanted to be a Vet. Unfortunately, there was one bio class he couldn't pass. So he looked at the credits he had and narrowed it down to two other majors. One of those was journalism. He flipped a coin to decide which major to complete and ended up with journalism. That's been his job for the rest of this life. That's probably the purest example of this scenario.

 

[Moko]

My left turn moment comes from a single text message. Because I responded to that message I am now in financial ruin. Probably gonna end up losing everything.

 

[Bloodwhiner]

My left turn moment comes from a single text message. Because I responded to that message I am now in financial ruin. Probably gonna end up losing everything.

Dude, Rule #1 - never respond to text messeges from exiled Nigerian rulers.

 

[Mr Cool Dude]

This is an interesting thread.

My 'Turn Left' moment occured six years ago this month. Basically, I was having some problems, and eventually I had to make a decision. I could face up to my problems, do the honourable and brave thing, and try to overcome them - or disregard the opportunity to change my life, and run away instead. I regret that I chose the second option. I was a frightened and unconfident 21 year old boy, I knew what the right thing to do was, but I didn't have the strength of character to do it.
The last six years have been a mistake - they shouldn't have happened like they did. Now, I'm in a bad way again, and it's much worse than six years ago. I have no doubt that the reason I'm here is because of that cowardly decision I made. I will do everything I can to overcome my problems, and I think I will do it, but I've lost six years of my life.
The moral of the story is, in everything you do, be brave, be prepared to take risks, and do the right thing. Make sure you're conscience approves of the decisions you make.

 

[Moko]

Dude, Rule #1 - never respond to text messeges from exiled Nigerian rulers.[/QUOTE]

Ha ha it was not from a Nigerian ruler it was from someone I know

 

[the Dagman]

I regret laughing when I should not have laughed. It was Valentine's Day, and the cute blond girl from Sweden who sat next to me in class began to profess her love for me. It wasn't a joke, but I thought it was and was being made at my expense. It wasn't. She was opening her heart to me, and I made her cry. I just could not believe what she was telling me and had been the butt of many jokes in school that had started that way. I was always the fat kid, subjected to bullying and mockery. So I kept myself closed off and laughed just to protect myself. When I should have told her I felt the same for her, which I did. And by the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. If I had managed to open myself up to her then, I may have been able to stop myself from developing a dissociative personality disorder. Or "The Wall" as I call it. Yeah, a lot like the Pink Floyd album.

I regret not telling my father "No. That doesn't belong to you." That could have been a game changer for the world. Had I done so and he listened, I would have been filthy rich and had the means to start the self-sustaining charity idea that has been in my head for decades. A charity that could have been feeding the poor forever by now. Without any government aid. Thanks dad, rot in hell.

There are so many others, but those are my big two that could have profoundly changed my life.

 

[Jan]

The one that changed my life was when I chose to get involved with somebody I *knew* was dangerous when I was 18. Hey, at that age we all think we can handle anything. Boy, was I wrong! If I hadn't done that, I never would have had to run 2,000 miles to get away from him, would never have met the man who eventually became my husband, would never have lived in several places around the country, wouldn't be who I am today.

I can't say I regret it because I'm not at all unhappy with the way my life has turned out but there were some rough times along the way and my life would have been very different if not for that mistake.

Jan