The Serendipity of Sliding Doors
There are infinite ways that our lives can lead. Any one moment may seem insignificant. But it could also be a critical juncture where your path diverges.
London. Mid-day.
Helen had just been fired from her position at an up-and-coming public relations firm, ousted for what she believed to be trivial reasons indeed. Frustrated at her newly unemployed status, Helen was determined to escape the situation altogether and catch the first train home.
She ran down the concrete steps of the white, tile-clad station, descending farther into the Tube.
The Sliding Doors
It was in this brief moment that a young girl, with a blond Barbie doll in hand, raced around the tight, blind corner up the winding stairs, from the opposite direction. This girl, far too young to be concerned with things like jobs or any form of adulting whatsoever, joyfully assisted the Barbie doll as it walked, hopped, and skipped along the handrail.
Unaware that an anxious Helen had a different agenda, the little girl nearly tumbled right into her.
Helen paused her distressing journey for a moment, regained her composure, and passed the little girl, frantically trying to catch the train. In that one moment, Helen’s opportunity had passed.
The automatic sliding doors of the train car began to shut just before Helen could manage to reach inside and activate the doors’ safety stop. The train was gone.
Or was it?
A Second Chance in Parallel
The camera next to Helen rewinds time, and Helen is transported back to the stairs where she nearly collided with a girl and her Barbie doll moments before. Reliving the scenario a second time, the little girl is pulled away from Helen moments before their interaction by the little girl’s parent. Unencumbered by the small child, Helen runs to the train, making it safely into the cab.
This sequence of events is from a classic romantic comedy starring Gwenyth Paltrow called Sliding Doors. Helen (Paltrow) lives out two parallel scenarios from this one moment. The film follows both Helens for the duration of the run time, comparing the increasingly different lives her character experiences from this single inflection point.
The Helen who makes the train arrives home and finds her longtime boyfriend cheating, catching him red-handed. The other Helen who misses the train instead gets mugged and sent to the hospital—never seeing the act of infidelity.
Quite the difference a moment can make.
I think of this movie a lot when I consider how small choices and little bits of serendipity or luck can dramatically shift the paths we make for our lives. Sometimes the choices we make have little to no consequence on our journey. But, other times, they can be the difference between meeting the love of our lives, getting the job we’ve always dreamed of, or finding meaning we never knew we needed.
The closing of two sliding doors splits Helen’s life. In one version, she goes on to reinvent herself and ends a toxic, long-term relationship. That path has its own choices and consequences. The Helen who doesn’t realize she’s being cheated on, goes on to live a different path. Both are still Helen, but each must now work through different problems and joys that arise on their path. As the movie plays out, neither path is without challenge. But equally, neither path is without joy or happiness either.
Making Choices in the Moment
The hook is to see how one person might make different choices given two scenarios.
What I find most interesting to take away from Helen’s story isn’t that she needs to deal with both situations. Rather, I love that the fate of the situation is unknown to her through both timelines. We (as the audience) have an understanding of how the story is playing out across both adventures. But the Helen of one timeline will never know the path of the other.
When it comes to living our lives, I consider my own choices less in terms of regrets and more in terms of “What should I do with the information I know and have right now?”
How do you make your own choices in the moment?
Don’t let the idea of infinite possibility stop you from making the best ones you can. Like Helen, we don’t see the other lives. We live them knowing only the context we have right now.
Maybe the sliding doors close. Maybe they stay open.
Make your next move based on the now, not the "what if."
And avoid the blond Barbie dolls.
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