Brian Klaas

I didn't choose where I was born.

I didn't choose when I was born.

All those things had a profound effect on the trajectory of my life.

But what you're referring to, I think, is a really important idea, which is that when we look back, we have these sort of building blocks where we sort of had a plan and then things happened, right?

And they diverted our plan.

But on top of that, there's a lot of things that happened that you're totally, totally blind to.

There is a film from the 1990s called Sliding Doors, which is starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

And it's got this basically two versions of this woman's life, one in which she makes the tube train, the subway train, and one in which she misses it.

And she has no idea.

It's a split second, basically, that shifts her life.

And her world turns out radically differently.

And I think this idea is really important that it's not just that our trajectories through careers and families and who we meet and who we spend our lives with and so on can be swayed by little tiny changes.

It's also that there's all these invisible pivots that we're totally oblivious to.

Those sliding doors moments.

Or for me, I didn't know about this mass murder that ended up producing my existence until I was in my mid-20s.

I mean, I was totally blind to this.

And it's obviously a very important part of my origin story.

But I was ignorant of it.

How many other things am I ignorant of about the pathway of my life?

I mean, it's an infinite number.