An alternative world
Some events lead you to live a completely different life
This week I found out that I passed the level 3 of the CFA exam. I couldn’t help but remember that time in November last year when I found out I was pregnant and realised that my (manually calculated) due date was 2 weeks before the actual CFA exam date. I remembered being convinced it was ‘not a big deal’ and that it wouldn’t affect my chances of passing the exam. I was somehow confident that being 8.5 month pregnant and sitting a 6 hour exam would be challenging but manageable.
In the end, I did not give birth to a baby. My exam results showed that I was in the bottom 5th percentile of the people who passed. I am forced to admit that there was a high probability that I would have failed that exam had I been pregnant. Then it got me thinking: what else would be different? Yes the obvious: I would be a mother. But what else?
So let’s see.
Well, I wouldn’t have run a marathon in 3 hours something (58 actually, but 3 hours something nonetheless).
I would have probably missed one of my best friends wedding (mon chouchou!), and probably his stag too (ok that’s less important but super cool nonetheless). I wouldn’t have gone to Barcelona with my burning man family.
I would still be in my old job with my old colleagues, with one of my favourite bosses of all time and yet, I would be unchallenged and a bit bored, working in an industry I felt little emotion for, the more I worked in it (media). On paper, changing jobs is not the biggest thing that happens in one’s life. And yet it is! Especially for people for whom a job is never just a job. Especially because you spend 10–12 hours a day with people. People you meet have a dramatic influence on your life. They say you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Had I not been at Barclays I wouldn’t have met my husband, nor one of my best friends. So yes, in a way not having this baby changed my life trajectory in so many different ways — because who knows who I will meet at this new gig?
I wouldn’t have gone to Africa and in particular Botswana. Besides flying over the Victoria falls and the Okavango Delta, I wouldn’t have camped in a remote Bostwanan village, experience perfectly smoked marshmallows for the first time of my life (was about time) with some lovely Australian people. Mostly I would not have sung “beautiful Bostwana” holding hands in circle around a big fire, alternating a white and a black person — in true Bostwana flag fashion (my favourite moment of the whole trip). Cheesy you might say but I really felt for a brief moment that there was just us in the middle of nowhere, that fire, the milky way and some hippos somewhere we could not see but only hear.
Yet, what is all this vs. the incredible magic of being a mother? — you might rightly ask. Well it’s not comparable, and that is why I want to have kids btw — because yes of course I could just keep doing all that and never plan for a family. So yes, to me none of the above replaces having a family.
So besides passing an exam, visiting a new country, challenging my neurons in a new job, meeting new people and potentially new friends, this is what I take away: when I am eventually pregnant and a mother, I won’t care if it’s a boy or it’s a girl, what month I give birth in, nor if I can get a nice maternity leave package. I will just be grateful if I have a healthy little baby.
I won’t take anything for granted. And that’s the single big thing that will be different.
