But I Would Have Adapted

 

About a year ago I wondered what life would’ve been like had I not gone to Penn, and the big snow and extended freeze from the past several days has me returning to this thought experiment. Specifically, and this is interesting because way back it really came down to Penn and Berkeley – go to the East Coast Ivy League school and best business program in the world, or stay close to home and continue to hang out with my high school friends – because the other two schools I got into were Michigan and MIT. 

So, in a parallel universe in which I go to one of those schools, and like in real life I meet a girl and end up making a family and life right in place, right now I’d be living in Ann Arbor or Boston. In which case having snow and ice on the ground for weeks on end would be a normal winter challenge to get through. 

Being sensitive to the cold and pining to get back on the golf course, my patience with this extended freeze (and the impact it has on simple things like using my car and going for a pleasant walk outside) is running thin. So it feels uncomfortable to think about of having to deal with something like this for months on end every single year. 

The thing about parallel universes, though, is that we adjust. In the real world, I’ve morphed from young suburban Cali kid to middle-aged East Coast city guy. I’ve made it work and it in turn has made me who I am. And so in those parallel universes in which I’m a proud alumnus of the University of Michigan or Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and, I guess, to complete the thought, rooting for Detroit and Boston sports team, yikes!), I’m also more acclimated than the current me to things like very cold temps and extended seasons of snow on the ground. 

Just like my current self, I may not like it. But I would have adapted, just like I have to this life I’ve made for myself. It has its pros and cons. And so will my kids have their preferences, but those preferences will meet the realities of their own lived experience, and they too will thrive or suffer, change and be changed, and make something out of it all.