Thought of the Day - How Do We Account for Random Events?

As we mature, it is not uncommon to find ourselves questioning ourselves  and our career choices more and more.  Is he really my "best friend", is there such a thing as a "best friend"?  Is this really the job I want to do...is this the career I want to be in?  Is this it...I mean surely there must be more to life than this?  How did I even get to working here? who am I??...OK so perhaps not ALL of us ask ourselves these questions, but I certainly do, is that weird?

What I believe, is that in a majority of cases, it is the minute chance events that take us to where we want to be.  I'll give you an example, when I finished my A levels and went to London, I had always imagined how it would be like to study at a University in London, I mean after all, this level of Education in one of the most prestigious European cities was stuff dreams were made of right? I wondered how it would feel like to sit in a lecture hall and listen to a professor do his thing...just like in the movies...I had no idea how I was going to afford it, as we all know international student fees are astronomical, but I had a feeling I was gonna do it one way or another.  As it happens, a year after I arrived in London, I took my visiting cousin to Lewisham College to apply to one of the many programs offered by the institution.  I had no intentions of applying cause I knew I couldn't afford it, but my cousin persuaded, "c'mon man...why don't you just try, you never know"...so I did, we both filled in the application forms and a couple of weeks down the line, I received a letter of admittance from them!  I wasn't even sure what I wanted to study, all I knew was that I wanted something to do with computers (apparently that was what everyone was doing back then...or so I was told).  To cut a long story short, I enrolled and was delighted when I found out I could pay my fees in installments.  To top it off, I later  found out that there was a hardship fund for students facing financial difficulties.  My lovely teacher told me about the fund after I mentioned to her my financial worries. I was reluctant to apply at first, I thought in order to get some money from these folks I would need to write some fascinating stuff...what could I possibly tell them?  On the deadline day for applying to the fund, I poured my heart out as I wrote by hand (typing would have taken forever with my one finger) on a piece of paper, nothing fancy, I just honestly put down on paper how if I felt - and that was that there was no way I could pay the fees without assistance -  and that I might be forced to drop out of something.  As it turns out, I got the biggest amount given by that fund in that particular year, so as you see, it's just a series of chance events that eventually got me to college and eventually to University.  

Even though most of us would like to think we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do and how to go about achieving it, we shouldn't totally discount chance happenings that might lead us in a different path.  You never know where that event could lead you to.  It's normal that, as human beings we are often quick to dispel negative experiences, but even a negative experience can prove to be just the tonic in getting you to where you want to be eventually, even though you might not necessarily know where that is right now...even though you think you do.  

Like I said at the beginning, it's the random, unlikely and unexpected events that generally have the most extraordinary impacts on our future and our ability to model and decide what the future will be...