I should advise you to walk the other way.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a great deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where – ” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“ – so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

- Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This isn't a story about destiny. There's no such thing. This is a story about choices.

I first heard about this scene from Alice in Wonderland in an R.E. class in year 11, when I was talking to a girl next to me about what we were going to do after our GCSEs. She told me that she didn't know what she wanted to do, but that it didn't really matter.

“…Really?” I asked, sceptically.

“Yeah. My Mum said that it’s like that part in Alice in Wonderland where she meets the Cheshire Cat, and she doesn't know which way to go so it doesn't matter which way she goes, if you know what I mean?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

I didn't know what she meant. So I went on worrying about which options to take and blindly guessing at where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do and meticulously planning every detail of my future, just like our teachers and parents told us to. Choose where you want to get to first, think about how to get there second. That's the way it's supposed to be, right?

I decided on journalism. Journalism, or something like journalism. No, wait, I had some work experience in marketing and I loved it. Yes, advertising is the job for me. Definitely. I think. Or publishing would be good, or something in the media. One of them. No, no, I am most definitely born to be a journalist. Yep, that’s it. I am so glad I know exactly what I want to do with my life, and precisely how to go about it. My path is definitely set.

But it wasn't, and it took me a terrifying year of uni to realise that it never is and it never will be. It took me another year to realise that this is exactly the way it should be.

Halfway through my second year I saw that there were some career talks going on. Since I had a free afternoon, I stumbled into one about working in TV. I could have so easily missed that talk and tentatively crept down some route into journalism, but after an hour in that room my whole vision had changed. Just like that, I found myself walking in the opposite direction to the one I had planned.

A couple of months later, I was given the best opportunity of working in TV that I could have imagined. I’ll never know if I only sought this opportunity because of my predetermined choice, or whether I was just very lucky. I don’t believe in destiny, but sometimes the random circumstances of life can form the stepping stones that give you a direction, even if it is tenuous and subject to change, and even if it is not the one you had originally planned.

A couple of weeks ago, I read the Alice tales and I remembered the conversation I had in year 11 once again. Only now did I realise what my friend had meant. Perhaps I didn't know for certain where I wanted to go; perhaps it will always be changing, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes we don’t know where we want to go until we get there, so it doesn't matter in which direction we start. But you will always get somewhere, so long as you walk long enough, and so long as you keep walking. Sometimes random circumstances overrule our original choices, and sometimes random circumstances bring us exactly what we were after before we knew what we were looking for. Sometimes, as nonsensical as it seems, walking in the opposite direction to what we want might just bring us the thing we were aiming for all along.

“I should advise you to walk the other way.”

This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise she lost sight of her in a moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again.

A little provoked, she drew back, and, after looking everywhere for the Queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.

It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the hill she had been so long aiming at.

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass