The Unanticipated Impact of Seemingly Small Decisions in Life

It has always fascinated me to think about how small decisions I have made eventually led to major impacts on my life. We often make seemingly insignificant decisions dozens of times per day without thinking too much of it, but in reality, your present place in life can be traced back to those moments of action.

Imagine you are hiking on a mountain. You have two paths to choose from. You can’t decide, so you flip a coin and take the one to the right that goes up, while the other goes down. While climbing up high, you hear a thunderous crack. Looking below, you see that an avalanche has completely destroyed the lower trail that you would have been on had you chosen the other route. That is a dramatic, but concrete example of what the significance of a decision may be.

That may be a little dramatic, but gets the point across. Envision. You choose to wake up early one morning instead of sleeping in as you normally do. You decide to exercise before the day starts. You choose to ride a bike to work instead of driving your car. You make a call to that person you have been talking about instead of putting it off. You talk to the person next to you in the checkout line instead of staying in your own world. You read the first pages of a book you have had sitting around for a long time. Each of these decisions may or may not have significant impact on your life, but sometimes they do.

I can think of several significant decisions I have made without realizing what a dramatic impact they would have on my life. Today, I will share just one.

It was 2005 and I was on the phone with a travel agency connected to my credit card account. I was trying to use the points I had accumulated to buy a flight to Costa Rica, where I had traveled the previous year. I had promised myself that I would try to travel once per year, as it had been almost a decade without traveling internationally.

At that time, one had to arrange a flight 21 days prior when using credit card points. They informed me that the number of points needed for Costa Rica had gone up. I had little other money, so I asked if there was somewhere where Spanish was spoken that I could travel to with those points.

I was told that both Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic were possibilities. I knew very little about either and next to nothing about the Dominican Republic except that I used to have some cool postage stamps from there.

It was in the day and age of slow 14.4 K or 28.8 K modems in the house. It was 11 at night and I had to decide by midnight. I told them I would call them back and I started researching online. The Dominican Republic looked interesting, so I thought, “What the heck,” and I impulsively chose to go there. I called them back and booked the flight for a nine-day trip. I decided to look for a hotel near the airport and would stay there until I figured out what to do and where to go. The town was called Boca Chica. Small mouth. I ended up staying there the entire nine days.

Each day I would lie in the sun on the beach, swim, get manicures, pedicures and massages at very cheap rates. It was luxurious. In the afternoons I would run, dripping with sweat, through the community. Occasionally I would get into a pickup basketball game. At night I would sip rum and cokes in the pool before going out to eat. In the mornings I would start the day with some strong coffee at a local cafeteria. I loved it there.

I continued to go to the Dominican Republic each year for the next several years. Why change when I liked it so much? I developed some friendships and felt more at home there than I did in the USA.

On Facebook, I started to connect with people in the Dominican Republic. There was one extremely attractive woman that I did not know. For some reason, I saw photos of her and was drawn to her but did not contact her. She must have been connected online to people I had met.

Fast forward to 2010. I was going through a divorce, and I finally reached out to that intriguing face I saw. We began to talk every day online and eventually via the phone, but we had not met in person.

In June of 2011, shortly after my divorce, I was traveling to the Dominican Republic and I told that person, who is Denny, that I would be landing in Puerto Plata and if she wanted to meet, we could, but that I also understand it might be weird having never met before.

I was somewhat surprised and happy that she decided to meet me. We spent almost a week together at a nice resort. We swam, snorkeled and had a great time. I gave her a ride back to her hometown of San Francisco de Macoris.

After the trip, I was scheduled to go to Doha, Qatar to work and live there. Once I arrived,  and I talked everyday via Skype. Mornings and nights. I would have asked her to come stay with me, but that was not allowed at the time in Qatar.

Finally, I decided that it was silly that we weren’t together, and I asked her to marry me. We got married in December of 2011 in her hometown. It was a wonderful event and unique for me to get married in a foreign country. She joined me in Qatar in February of 2012.

We then moved to Abu Dhabi as I was recruited to work at Khalifa University. Denny and I traveled to many countries. Jordan, Israel, Oman, Iran, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, Netherlands, France, Nepal, Thailand, Mauritius, Georgia, Armenia, Malaysia, the Maldives and more. The woman who had barely traveled in her own country was now a world traveler.

In 2017, we decided to try to have children via IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). We had visited with several clinics and finally decided to try one time to conceive. If it didn’t work, we agreed not to try again.

In August of 2017, very early in the process, we were told that not only was the process successful, but we were to have twins. It was an amazing day. On March 9, 2018, Denny gave birth to twins in Abu Dhabi. They were born prematurely and Robert, our boy, spent a few days in ICU, but they made it. We have twins, a boy and a girl. Robert, who I have written about, is autistic. We did not know that until he was just over two years old.

In 2020 at the onset of Covid, we moved to the Dominican Republic, eventually settling in Punta Cana in a gated golf community. Shortly after arriving, we learned Robert was autistic and our lives changed dramatically, eventually resulting in immigrating to the USA in March of 2022 to seek more resources for him.

We now live in Mount Vernon, Washington. Robert is thriving as is his twin sister Aisha. They are almost eight years old. I am typing by the side of the YMCA pool while they swim right now.

I wonder what would have happened if I had chosen Puerto Rico over the Dominican Republic? Would I have remained married to my first wife? I don’t think so. I of course would not have met my wife of 14 years, Denny. I most likely wouldn’t have young children. I already have a 31 year old daughter and 27 year old son. I would most likely not have lived in the Dominican Republic. I would not have learned all about autism.

That impulsive decision at 11 PM in 2005 completely changed the direction and outcome of my life and I had no idea that the decision was so significant.

I have made other such decisions that have had wide ranging impact. I will share those in future posts.

Be careful about your decisions, but not too careful, as you never know what wonderful things await you down the road.

https://youtu.be/nKbMPdGsE5I?si=Mph-T4hgkDLn2lQz

(making decisions)