A parallel life
A little while ago, I was sitting with a glass of port in the sunshine, relaxing and letting my mind wander, and I found myself considering what my life might have been like had I not become enthralled with computers, back at secondary school.
My father was a photographer in the Royal Navy, and whilst he and my other never tried to push me into any single career, I naturally had a deep interest in the (first) career that my dad had chosen. Who wouldn’t dream of sailing the world, exploring far away places and helping to operate a powerful warship, particularly the large aircraft carriers that my dad spent considerable time on? Naturally, I had an inclination to sign up for naval officer training school as soon as I completed school.
As a child I had been fascinated by maps from an early age. Again, I inherited this from my father - the two of us would study maps, National geographic or even road maps, until I could identify the coastline or any segment of a map of almost any country in the world. I also developed a natural sense of direction which is still with me, enabling me to find my way with the barest glimpse of a map. Some of my earliest memories are of primary school, spinning the globe and peering at the strange places my finger fell on. Again, it is not surprising then that my choice of career in the Royal Navy was that of navigator.
I was also fascinated by explorers. I read about Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton, Hillary and Everest, the Andes and Amazon and all the remote areas of the world. This fine-tuned my potential Royal Navy career, especially when I heard about the Antarctic survey branch of the Navy, who explored and charted the southern seas. This then, was the career for me! Until I programmed a computer that is…
So here then, is my alternative life… the life that might have been: As a navigator in the Royal Navy, I served upon several warships, circumnavigating the globe several times, before moving into the Antarctic Survey, spending years at and around the southern pole, charting the bays and ice flows and learning to survive in extreme conditions. With like-minded ship mates I participated in expeditions into the interior, hauling sleds and traversing the continent, only to move to the north pole and perform similar feats of personal exploration. This naturally led me to climbing, where I could easily apply my polar survival skills and Navy-trained fitness, to climbing some of the more famous peaks of the world like McKinley, Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro. After leaving the Navy, I pursued my love of remote places by climbing all the major peaks of the world, culminating with Everest and K2, then turned to the tropical regions and explored the Amazon, the Congo, Borneo, scuba-diving the great reefs of the world. In my alternative life, now, at age 43, I contemplated the next great challenge as I applied to the European Space Agency to become a member of their newly developing Astronaut corps, hoping to take my first trip into the final frontier within a decade.
But for a handful of events early in life, this could have been my life. Or… any number of more mundane careers could have come to be. Do I regret my real life over my possible life? A little… but our dreams and fantasies aren’t always so good in real-life. I still travel, I still love navigation and maps, and a few of those moments from my possible life are not yet closed to me.
