Day 29 of 30: Forks in the Road

Jedidiah Jenkins on bullies and pivotal moments

Jedidiah Jenkins, tracing his route across South America

Hi friend,

Throughout my twenties, I used to play this game with my friend Lizzie, where we asked “what if?”—not of the future but of a parallel life. What if you had stayed with that boyfriend? What if you had taken that job? What if, when you missed that train, it changed everything?

It’s possible that the game was subconsciously inspired by that movie Sliding Doors, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, which I watched for the first time on a laptop in my college dorm room. If you haven’t seen it, the story hinges on a moment where the main character is racing to catch a train, and suddenly the whole movie bifurcates: into the life where she makes it, and the life where she doesn’t.

At that age, when it seemed everything was possible but so much was unknown, the movie felt so resonant. I could sense that it was a time to try different things and see where they might lead—but with so many of my classmates applying to law school or signing multi-year contracts with big companies, I also felt pressure to pick one path. Everything felt strangely high and low stakes at the same time. 

Meditating on the pivotal moments and the choices we’ve made is a useful exercise—as a way to make sense of the past, sure, but also to illuminate the future. Looking back, I realize that the decisions I’ve regretted most are the ones where I was overly influenced by others, where I polled too many friends, when I did what they thought I should do. The decisions that I’m proudest of are the ones where I listened to myself, to my own intuition, and made a choice that was not the most obvious or rational but ended up being the right one. 

It reminds me of this gorgeous line from our Studio Visit with the wise and wonderful Jedidiah Jenkins, whose second book, Like Streams to the Ocean, just came out in February as an instant New York Times bestseller. “Being good and being performatively perfect is not what’s going to save me,” he said. “What’s going to save me is being authentic and standing strong and being who I am.” 

Today we’re revisiting Jed’s prompt, which meditates on these pivotal moments—the ones that sometimes feel insignificant, that at some point you might even have considered a mistake, but that brought you to where you are today. 

Sending love,

Suleika

P.S. In a new post called “On Shaking the Sleeping Self,” we’ve gathered some of Jed’s kernels of wisdom from his Studio Visit. It’s available to paid subscribers—you can find it here!

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Forks in the Road by Jedidiah Jenkins

When looking back, the years of a life tell a story. The chain of days string together into a narrative shaped by choices we make at pivotal moments, some large, some small. 

In middle school, I was teased for having a girly voice. I was called a “fag” a few times but didn't know what it meant, only that it was bad. One kid—I still remember his full name the way we always remember a childhood bully's name—cornered me in the hallway and told me I was an “ugly fag.” He was short, comically short, and it had turned him mean. I was six inches taller than him but soft and rosy-cheeked and scared out of my mind. After he had seen my fear, happy in his power, he left me standing in the hall. I trembled and hot rage crawled up from my chest to my face. I wanted to kill the little cockroach. I wanted to become cruel like him. I knew I was smart, and that if I used my words right, I could cut him into sashimi. 

But as the anger flushed my cheeks, a thought appeared in my head: What type of person do you want to be? A mean person or a nice person? If you are mean, you can hurt him back. If you are friendly, and funny, perhaps you can win him, even make him like you. I answered the question in my thoughts. “To be mean seems exhausting. I'd rather be funny and nice and show him that he should be kind to me, and be my friend. I'll be so nice and fun that he'll regret being mean.” It was as if a demon and an angel were on my shoulders, and I chose the angel.

Here's another one. It was during junior year of high school, when we were all applying to college and daydreaming about what life would become. It just so happened that Time magazine had named the University of Southern California “college of the year.” They had photos of beautiful grassy parks with kids playing guitar and frisbee, of college football and beautiful architecture. I'd never heard of it, but because of those photos, I made USC my first choice. If Time hadn't chosen that school, and chosen another one, I wonder if my life would be completely different. If I would have planted my life in Chicago, or New York, or who knows?

Thinking of this makes me smile. So much of my life is either chance, or some thought that sprung into my head as if from nowhere. It makes me grateful and curious about what it means to be alive, to have a life and be along for the ride. I am both the author and the reader of a fascinating story. One where this loss led to that triumph. This hope led to that disappointment. This longing to that love. With a little distance, and the knowledge that you survived what had once seemed difficult or even deadly, these moments can take on magical significance.

Your prompt for today:

Identify two turning points in your life. Describe what led up to them, why you chose the path you did, and how it led to now.

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Studio Visit: A Conversation with Jedidiah Jenkins

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