Any second could be the second: How thinking about what might have been affects the emergence of meaning and commitment across the adult life span

Abstract

When major decisions arise, people make choices that immediately set them on particular life paths and trajectories. Such pivotal moments have been dramatized in literature (e.g., Frost's (1969) famous poem, The Road Not Taken), film (e.g., Sliding Doors), and even in a recent series of AT&T commercials that portray this phenomenon as it relates to modern day life. In one such commercial, the narrative moves backward in time from a president being inaugurated, to his early childhood, to his parents buying their first home, and to their first date at a movie theater. The commercial ends with a younger version of the president's father waiting idly for a train as he suddenly notices a gorgeous woman sitting in the passenger car across the platform. When he instantly changes his ticket (wirelessly, on his AT&T phone of course) so that he can have the opportunity to meet her, the tagline Any second could be the second plays across the screen. Naturally, we are left to wonder: What if he hadn't been able to change his train ticket? Would the course of his life have played out differently? Would another opportunity have arisen to unite him with his wife and mother of his child (the future president, no less)? In this chapter, we propose that how people think about past events and decisions - whether and how they consider those seemingly chance events and alternative realities that might have been - fosters an appreciation for both those defining moments from the past, as well as the present reality that these moments helped to construct.