Felix Desmarais: Would Australian me have made the same life choices?

Felix Desmais ponders his Sliding Doors moment as he takes a train in Sydney. Photo / File

OPINION

The 1998 film Sliding Doors was one of the first DVDs (remember them?) I ever owned. I bought it in an edgy second-hand store in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, in 2004.

The film follows a character played by Gwyneth Paltrow, at the height of her movie career, and follows two storylines that hinge on whether she catches a train on a particular day.

Taking several trains while in Sydney last week for my cousin's wedding, it had me wondering how my life would have looked if I stayed living there when I finished school - my own sliding doors moment.

I was born in New Zealand but my family moved to Sydney - with me, I was only 15 - in 2003. The result for a short period, I sounded like an Australian to New Zealanders and a New Zealander to Australians.

Going to school there, I developed my twang and before me lay an Australian life. In a limited entry system, I gained admission to the University of Sydney to do an English degree, but somewhat at the last minute, and drunk on teenage angst to leave home, I decided to move back to New Zealand on my own and do a film and theatre degree at Victoria in Wellington.

On the face of it it was a deranged decision - at the time I believe Sydney Uni was one of the best universities in the world and Victoria is a great university but it's not Sydney Uni. I was also unmooring myself from my support network to live in a city I'd only visited briefly once. But no one could convince me when I'd made my decision.

The first year was utterly awful, but I soon made my life in Wellington and started writing plays and performing. Mum and Dad moved back a few years in, which probably helped, though there's no way 21-year-old me would have admitted that.

I was pretty lost for most of my 20s, for a variety of reasons, but a big one was finding what I wanted to do in the world. I found that in journalism when I was 28, having never considered it before, stumbling on it almost by accident.

But all the while was a parallel universe across the Tasman where my Australian life was playing out. I doubt I would have liked doing an English degree, I would have hated reading things I didn't care for. But my best friend went to Sydney Uni and stumbled on journalism early on.

Would I have followed her? Would I have found my career path sooner? Even if I had, would it still have played out well, would I have been ready for it?

I was ruminating about this on the train, going round in circles, trying to rest on an answer whether my angsty, artistic, impulsive 18-year-old self made the right choice for me, the 34-year-old, with all I know now.

The truth is it is not worth spending a second's thought on, no matter how alluring.

Life is a series of choices, and we do our best with them when they come along. We never know how they're going to play out. I could imagine I would have been happier or more successful, maybe even more bronzed and good-looking, if I had been Australian Felix. But it's unknowable and pointless.

What is most important is happiness.

Within us all are an infinite number of possible lives we could have lived, but the one we are living is the most important, and it's what we do with that, and the present and future choices we make, that matter.

Because it doesn't bear thinking about what kind of great movies Gwyneth Paltrow would have made if she hadn't pivoted to whatever the heck 'Goop' is. But at least she's happy.

• Felix Desmarais is a journalist mostly-former stand-up comedian.