chance and capriciousness

I've been thinking a lot about choices lately. How we (generally) approach them, best practices, advice columns. How I have approached them in the past with pro/con lists, hand-drawn decision trees, epic dithering, and endless cycles on the worry-go-round. Some of those decisions have turned out very well, and they definitely got easier when I gave myself permission to choose wrong. But some of those agonized-over decisions have just been meh. 

On the other hand, some of the greatest impacts on my life have been the result of chance and capriciousness. For example, these days,  I’m often asked why I, an American living in Yerevan, speak Russian. People guess that my parents are Russian (they are not) or that my husband was (he wasn’t). My family are US melting pot mutts. The reality is that I speak Russian because of a choice I made when I was 12.

My US high school offered five languages—Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Latin. In the 8th grade, a language was required, so in the 7th grade each student took 7 weeks of each language. In that time we learned simple introductory things like numbers, colors, and greetings. We played games and sang songs. We got a taste of the language in our mouths and the feel of it in our bodies. Then, we had to make a choice. 

Twelve-year-old me didn’t like the phlegmatic feeling of German in the back of the throat (and the teacher smelled funny). She also didn’t like the nasality of French (and the teacher was sharp, like a jumble of edges and angles). Latin seemed not useful--only the future physicians wanted to take it, and I wasn’t one of them. Spanish was the most popular, and many students who listed Spanish as a first choice ended up in a second or third choice, so that was out. 

I chose Russian by process of elimination, and not a highly logical, pro/con process of elimination, but a highly capricious one. 

And it changed my life. 

In the next years, I learned that I was good at language learning. I devoured vocabulary and reveled in the puzzle of inflectional morphology the way some people love crosswords and sudoku. Then, I traveled to St. Petersburg on an exchange with my school’s Sister School and fell in love with the places and the people.

In those same years, high-school me knew she was going to college but didn’t care to stretch for the big leagues like friends with Ivy aspirations. I applied to schools in Pennsylvania who offered Russian as a major—Penn State, Bryn Mawr, Kutztown, Edinburgh. I figured I would go to the one who offered me the best scholarships. 

Then one day, I walked into homeroom, and the teacher handed me a pass to visit my guidance counselor. I sat down thinking that this was very odd. From her seat in front of me, Colleen turned around, and said, “I know what this is about. It’s good news.” That was even more odd. Colleen and I were not friends. We just had the same surname. 

The guidance counselor explained that The American University, which was Colleen’s dream school, had sent her a letter with a very generous scholarship offer. She was excited until she got to the part of the letter that mentioned the offer was based on her PSAT scores. Colleen hadn’t taken the PSAT.

Confused, Colleen brought the letter to our guidance counselor, and he recognized my PSAT scores. He called the university and yelled at people until they admitted their error, collapsing two rows in their database to conflate my test scores with Colleen’s name and prior interest in the university. The resolution was that American waived our application fees, and we were both accepted. The generous scholarship outlined in Colleen’s letter was mine thanks to the merit of my grades and test scores and my family’s level of need. I don’t know what they offered Colleen. 

I accepted and enrolled at AU knowing nothing about the school other than its location in DC and the availability of a BA in Russian Studies. There were no pro-con lists, no dithering and deliberation. The chance of someone else's error and the imperative of poverty to follow the money swept me along. 

And yet, my time at American, a university that I hadn’t chosen to apply to, that I hadn’t even been aware of, brought me to this community, to these people.

Ilona, Lou, Kate, Taylor, Stuart, Chris in the Temple at Esna, Egypt, 2026

There are more chance events and capricious choices along the way—an 8:30 am stats class, accepting an invitation to church, saying yes to random hang outs.  All that chance and caprice adds up to this foundation of my adult life, to these people who have celebrated and mourned together, danced together in joy, cheered on one another’s success, and bolstered our collective resolve to persist in a variety of difficult careers. By choosing each other again and again, we have built an expansive and welcoming community that extends through time and geography. We have embraced each other's spouses and partners, we have nurtured each other's children, we have argued and reconciled, we have befriended each other's friends, and we have supported businesses and creative projects. I can't speak for how they each found their way to us, but I can say that my initial path to us was entirely chance and caprice. And I'm so very glad.

Taylor, Evelyn, Abigail, Kate, Bill, Kendra, Benjamin, Chris, Quincy, Teri, Ilona, Lou, Stuart at the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Luxor, Egypt, 2026

There’s a popular meme circulating these  days about embracing the unexpected. The formula is: “When you are [age (range)] someone will ask you to [do unexpected thing]. It’s important that you say yes.” Or alternatively, “When you are [age (range)], they will tell you [(not) to do something]. It’s important that you ignore them.” This meme focuses on those moments of decision that become turning points in a life. Many examples are the kind of deep, deliberative choice that feels momentous in the moment. Those moments are, of course, important. Some decisions need to be weighed. 

But don't discount capriciousness and chance. Sometimes they create profound beauty.