The power of choice

So I popped in the Blu-Ray version of "I Am Legend" and there is was before me: a choice. Theatrical version, or Alternate version.

Looking back on my life, I can really only pinpoint four or five choices that I made that had any long term impact on my life. Before I was 18 of course, my parents made the big decisions about where to live, what religion to embrace, and when to get up. But then the ball was in my court: where should I go to college, what to major in once I was there, where to go to graduate school, which postdoc to accept, whether to accept a position at Duke or Miami. Each of these decisions was mine to make and had a long term impact on my life. The other things, even long term friendships, long term research collaborations, etcetera, were to be honest external in nature; products of fortune and circumstance rather than in my active control.

Of course, what version of "I Am Legend" to watch will (I guess) not be of long term import to my life. But it was still a decision. Like life, you only watch a movie for the first time once, and how you view that movie will be most strongly influenced by the initial version. I could not go back and unwatch the first version before seeing the second, and so had to pick.

In the end, I found the version I did watch first more satisfying than the other.