“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

Ah, the dreaded foresight interview question, one that’s pretty commonplace, especially in corporate settings. Although primarily used as a way of sniffing out the overall ambitions of a candidate, I feel that this question highlights a fundamentally flawed approach at life: the pursuit of perfection, of having the rest of your life, including your career and maybe even your family, planned out for the next five, ten, twenty years.

Yes, planning is important. Not only that, but it’s imperative. And to achieve most goals, at least a little bit of planning is absolutely necessary. With that said, excessive perfectionism is not. I know people who have their 24 hours planned down to the minute, where a single bus delay can throw them off schedule and spur an anxious race to catch up.

Around the time I was told to construct a four-year plan my first semester of college, I didn’t even know what major to choose, much less what exactly I wanted to do with my life. But I did have a basic understanding that I wanted to pursue medicine. In a world where the expectation is that, by the age of ten, you’re well aware that you want to be a cardiothoracic surgeon working at Mt. Sinai with a convertible and two children, and exactly what path to follow to get there, I’d like to think that a lot less is within our control than we really think it is, that it’s okay to not have every little thing planned out.

A recent incident had me reflecting on how outcomes of many events in life hinge not on meticulous planning and careful execution (though a lot, realistically, do) but rather spur of the moment decisions, spontaneous moods, and really, sometimes just fate, can lead to the situations we find ourselves in. In other words, there’s a really high probability that you’ll diverge from the plan you’ve spent so long perfecting.

This is something I’ve been reflecting on ever since a particular incident occurred a few days ago. You see, I’ve someone who never answers phone calls... almost ever, even more so if it’s an unknown number. Calling me, no matter how urgent, is practically futile unless I’m specifically waiting for a call, though I’ve started to work on my being practically unreachable, mostly because my ringer is never on, and because of my strong preference for written discourse.

Somehow, the other day, I randomly went to check up on my phone, silent as could be, right as I received a call. For some reason, I picked up. The call was from a job I’d applied to on a whim and had I not diverged from my usual tendencies of avoiding phone conversations like the plague, I would never have known the person on the other end of the line was trying to schedule an interview for the next week. This seems small, but it made me wonder about the “Butterfly Effect," how a small incident in your life can go on to affect it significantly.

Perhaps, a paramount example of this would be one that my dad revealed to me just recently. At the moment, my dad is a Software/ I.T consultant, working in computers and business and sorts of things I am not entirely aware of. Little did I know that he almost ended up attending medical school. As it would turn out, my dad, after graduating from high school in Bangladesh (where students enter professional schools directly without having to pursue an undergraduate degree), was actually accepted into one of India’s renowned medical schools. So that summer, he planned to travel to India alone to start the matriculation process and complete the paperwork (this was well before electronic systems were in place). He happened to have a friend in Chennai, in South India, who was attending one of the engineering schools there and decided to visit him before matriculating. His weekend visit to his friend ended up swaying his decision, and ultimately, my dad decided to stay where his friend was, and not go to medical school.

And that’s the story of how my dad was almost a doctor but attended the Hindustan Institute of Engineering Technology instead. I’d like to think he ended up more than alright in the end.

I also think of the story someone who’s been an inspiration for me: Latasha Wright, who is a Chief Scientist at the BioBus, in New York City. An accomplished scientist with degrees from NYU, Johns Hopkins, and Weill Cornell, she now gives back to the community and inspires children from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue science, with help from a fully-equipped science research laboratory-on a bus. Her story is quite unique. After her two post-doctorate degrees, how did she end up working for a nonprofit in its early years when all it had to show was a refurbished bus? As it turns out, she first found out about this from her yoga instructor, who recommended she check out the great work the nonprofit was trying to do, and since then, the rest is history. Latasha has impacted communities all around New York City and made a difference in the lives of many students. Her impact is something I felt personally, as meeting her and coming to the BioBase, a new laboratory built to help “ground” some of the BioBus’ research, inspired me to pursue my degree in Biotechnology.

I always think about those small moments that you can’t plan, the chance encounters and coincidences, that can change your life. When you think about the future, things seem both murky and clear at the same time, and all I know is that regardless of what happens, it is probably for the best. For now, I’ll just trust in the process and do my best to follow the plan, though I’m well aware it could change at any moment. You never know how the people you meet will end up changing your life immensely down the line.

Que sera, sera.