One thing I’ve always been keenly aware of is that there is no way to change the past. If a time machine had been invented, I believe that someone would have screwed up somehow and let it slip that they are from the year 3013 to the world. So give up hope of Doc showing up in a DeLorean and asking you what you want to go back and change.

At the same time, I often wonder if things happen for a reason. Was I meant to have met the people who are so important to me now? Would circumstances have allowed us to meet even if my life had gone a different way?

I don’t really know that things are necessarily “meant to be.” I can’t say either way. I believe in a higher power, but I don’t pretend to understand it.

Every now and then, I wonder what would have happened if I had remained a Music Ed major in college. I famously (among those who knew me anyway) changed majors four times in college, quite unsure about what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

Ultimately, I left the music department because I saw the art of singing in a different way than the vocal faculty. I also wasn’t sure that I really wanted it badly enough to give my all to singing.

There are times I question my choice. Sometimes, I’m talking to performers in a musical about their passion, and I feel that twinge of what I used to feel when I thought about singing. Sometimes I’m singing a song in choir, and I think of how I would feel, standing in front as the director. What directions would I take with the music? How would I interpret that rest?

I always come back to music. No matter what emotion I am feeling, I can always find a song that perfectly captures it in a melody. Sometimes I need to sing as a sort of release, to convey my emotions in a way I can’t do with actions. Music is its own language for me, a language that I think is both universal but exclusive at the same time. I have been moved by music in ways I haven’t been able to accomplish otherwise.

Ultimately, though, I haven’t given up singing. I changed my major and went a completely different path, but I still have music in my life. So I suppose I don’t really have to think about the what ifs.

Although we can’t change the past, one thing over which we have some measure of control is the future. Yes, things have happened that we can’t change. But we can make choices to decide the direction we are going in the future.