The Do Over

Of all life's luxuries, the do-over is likely the most sought after. There is much wish for life's Mulligans and we long to have a few of them because they are worth a thousand fortunes in our lives than in golf. 

Just imagine if we can do-over everything we've ever done or will ever do in the future? We will all have 20/20 lives, won't we? What a perfect way to live. What a world we will have. The idea of heaven may not measure up. Why? You see, in the popular idea of heaven, everything is laid out for every resident to live a blissful life, free of everything that can ever go wrong. To some, that might be too restrictive. A life that allows no one to veer away from the prescribed path is a life devoid of initiatives or, worse, an existence of very little freedom. Especially to those with an incurable proclivity to  color outside the lines.  

There lies the conundrum for would-be armchair creators or dreamers of a perfect world. The Creator, to those who believe in the Divine Power of an omniscient Being, has not allowed us ordinary mortals even a little peek into the workings of an infinitely unfathomable wisdom. So, we make up something to yearn for perfection. And, imperfect as we are, we will ask the question anyhow. Wouldn't it be better if every human being is allowed to do a do-over? Wouldn't it be a perfect world in the end if we can change some of the things we did  after finding out it was wrong or "sinful"?  Indeed, why not?

It had been established, whether we subscribe to it or not, that uncertainty rules almost everything that is laid out in front of our present moment; i.e. until such time that an event had occurred or  that we acted on a decision to do something, everything was a mere probability. Let's assume certainty as indeed the dictum in a perfect heavenly life, isn't the do-over the perfect icing on an even more perfect cake that we can have? And eat it too?

Many years ago, there was an ad in the Wall Street Journal that ran like this. A company was looking for foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizens currently employed in the oil industry. Anyone interested was to send their resume to a P.O. Box number. It was like a beacon directed right at me.  The P.O. Box number was a turn-off, yes for sure, but it was The Wall Street Journal, I told myself. So I sent my resume.

After a little less than three weeks, a nondescript white envelope came with a one-page cover letter and a two-page form to fill out. It was some sort of search firm, based on the letterhead, that actually replied.  It explained that since the job involved working with (it didn't say, "for") the Federal Government, would I agree to a background check as that was a requirement. I filled out the form, answering some questions and providing additional information, and sent it back? 

Almost three months later, in the early evening after coming home from work, the phone at the kitchen rang as I was watching the evening news. A mild mannered voice that sounded like a man  of early to late middle age came on, looking for me. It was about the job application I sent a while back. Looking at the clock I assumed the caller had to be from the west coast, like California maybe, since all east coast offices, or even the local ones, would have been closed by then. After I confirmed who I was,  he informed me that he was calling from Langley, Virginia. I've never felt my legs turned so rubbery. I begged to sit down by the kitchen table, to which he  agreed was a good idea. I knew then that he knew that I knew what was going to come next. Wasting no time he confirmed my worst fear. He was calling from the office of personnel at the Central Intelligence Agency. He apologized for the delay in getting back to me on my application but it was due to the time it took to do a complete background check (talking to our neighbors maybe, my employer, my financial stability, etc?). Even as he may already have formed a good idea about my total trepidation - he worked at Human Resiurces of the CIA, after all - he went on to explain what the job was about, if I wanted to hear it.  The job was about economic intelligence gathering and analysis that will require foreign assignments. If I were hired, I was to go through a 2-3 year training in the U.S. depending on my progress on language proficiency of the assigned country or region. He added quickly that I should immediately remove from my head the James Bondish fantasies about the job.  I will not be involved in that kind of stuff. Now, almost nonchalantly but just as quickly he added that there will be some other training he could not get into but, yes, there will be some small firearms training but that was standard protocol on intelligence gathering training but the odds I was ever going to use it is zero. And I must not worry too much about that, or even be slightly concerned. I asked if the countries I was going to be involved with were located in the Far East or South Asia. Not necessarily, he answered.

The conversation which lasted for about half an hour felt longer than that and never have I wished  for it to be over so quickly right at about the moment  small firearms training was broached. Compensation, to begin with, was underwhelming to say the least. For the two to three year training period I would get the same salary I was then getting at the oil company I worked for. Obviously, my then current salary range was top dollar in the government sector. But, once I got a foreign assignment my compensation was going to be much better. I will have had employment with a real private corporation operating abroad with allowances, per diem, housing, etc. taken care of. Our two children will likely go to an American School or some international school system.

I thought it was worth going through all of that narrative to show just how things could have been, albeit all within the framework of mere probabilities, keeping in mind too that I was not yet offered the job.  There were going to be more interviews and psychological tests I probably had to go through and there was still the possibility after all that that I could have failed the training courses. Be that as it may, but allowing for the possibility of the "what could have been" would I actually yearn for a do-over? Even if only as a matter of an imagined life, the do over was not worth even a brief moment of contemplation - I concluded that a long time ago. I never told anyone that story for a very long while and when I did, a co-worker teased within earshot of others saying, "How do we know you didn't take that job since you are working for a foreign-owned oil company right now? This is convenient, isn't it". It had a good laugh and fortunately was never taken too seriously by anyone. (Note: By the way the CIA had since advertised want ads openly, at least for certain jobs)

Of course, every life lived fully has all kinds of room for do-over wishful thinking, from the run-of-the-mill mundanity to the sublime and life changing decisions. One may dismiss those to the bins of "neither here nor there" to "yeah, I'd like a do-over". We all have those moments but should we take such ruminations seriously?

Let's say, one is allowed to do-over his or her choice for a spouse after finding out it wasn't working. Well, if we consider the one-person point of view, it is as simple  as withdrawing a move in chess or checkers, it would seem wouldn't it? But what of the other person? And, if there were children, what of them? Now we know why do-overs will not work no matter how noble the purpose. Spectacular permutations aside, we know it will, as the saying goes, merely open "a can of worms" that would be impossible to sort out. But this never stops anyone from imagining, even questioning, in a profound way, "What if I had this instead of that? or "What could my life have been had I married so and so or taken that job instead of the one I'm stuck in right now?" In one sense or another, by bemoaning current circumstances so one can set them  aside is a temporary preoccupation of the mind scripted in a day dream. For most of us, and this  is a good thing, these ruminations barely linger or even taken to heart. For some, it could become a burden - as heavily laden as living in the past.

There is a never ending trove of scenarios we can quickly cite where a perfect situation could have been achieved had we been given a chance to do certain things differently. Yes, but it only begets a host of other things that affect other people and if they too had the same options, the scale at which many changes can occur become fundamentally impossible to  predict or account for because perhaps we live  in a universe of probabilities. It is a world where a scaffolding of probabilities keep being built in front of us, collapsing with each passage of time to become the reality in a lightning-quick present that immediately becomes part of our past - unchanging and unrecoverable. Such is the world we have where once passed all we have is the future. The  lessons  learned from the past are about all we have to perhaps make do-overs either unnecessary or unimportant. That is all we can hope for.