Trust the Person You Used to Be

A chain reaction of thoughts: 

I was walking past a cafe today, and lost in thought, had a flash of gratitude for my time as a waitress. It teaches you how to multitask and how to prioritize your work and the order in which things are done. Working in the service industry forces you to interact with people from all strata of society, and requires humility and tact during every shift. 

Then I thought about my boyfriend, and how I teasingly asked him if he’d ever worked at a restaurant that one time he got flustered making dinner.

Then I thought, a self-admonishment of sorts, about how hard he’d worked at his studies. Nevermind the service industry, he had also toiled away, and it took him to one of the top universities in the States. 

And then I realized, how in taking that part-time job at fifteen years old, I had unknowingly removed myself from the path of an elite education. This realization didn’t sting the way it would have in my twenties, when I was convinced that my purpose was to seize as many opportunities as possible. It didn’t anger me. That’s just the way things work out. 

***

The choice wasn’t presented to me in such a way, of course. It wasn’t some binary between a part-time job now and a state school later, or the continued discomfort of my family’s limited cash flow rewarded by a college scholarship down the road. Perhaps it was a bad deal. You never know where life will lead… (yadda, yadda, yadda). 

But I was no fool at fifteen. 

Obstinate, curious, and desperate to live in whatever world existed beyond Catholic school, I like to think that I stared down this fork in the road with a cold, calculating clarity. Perhaps I had already tired of my proximity to the rich intelligentsia; maybe State U sounded like a relief. 

And suddenly, what I thought had been a realization about the imperceptible twists of fate hiding in every small decision, was actually a reminder to trust the person you used to be.