Most of us have many turning points in our lives.

Things go right or they go wrong, or we make decisions between two options that send our lives in very different directions.

Some of us look back on those decisions and wonder how different our lives might have been if we had made the opposite decisions of the ones we actually made.

[caption id="attachment_680" align="alignright" width="300" caption="At 16, all the choices ahead of me."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Horse.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-680" title="Horse" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Horse-300x290.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="290" /></a>[/caption]

I believe we actually lead many lives, even though we are only aware of one of them. I think the choices we make send us in two different directions, and that there may actually be an alternate reality in which our life continues in the other direction.

When I was 17, I had two choices as to where to go to college. I had been accepted at both the University of Virginia and at Oakland University in Michigan. I chose Virginia, and given my social immaturity, it turned out to be completely the wrong choice. My experience in Charlottesville in 1967-68 sent me into a seven- or eight-year tailspin that clearly affected the rest of my life.

But somewhere, perhaps in some alternate reality, I chose to go to school in Michigan.

Just as in some alternate reality I chose not to marry Leslie Golman in 1975, or to go to work part-time at the <em>Washington Post</em> in 1980 instead of full-time at the <em>Alexandria Gazette</em>. Just as there was a reality in which I stayed in Colorado in 1988 instead of leaving for Reno.

Sometimes it's just a case of not knowing all the facts. When I was dating Cheryl Newman in late 1967 and early '68, I thought she was two years younger than I was.. But I learned many years later that she was actually 14 instead of 16 when we were dating. That made the situation very different, and made her parents' reaction much more logical. Something that hurt me very much would have made perfect sense to me instead.

This isn't to say that we live with regrets. It's much better to let go of the roads not taken and focus on living the best life we can in the reality we occupy.

But it's fun to realize that maybe -- in some alternate reality -- the roads we didn't take ... were taken.