Somebody Else Will

There is a commercial for some cell phone on TV.  It opens with some guy being inaugurated as president of the United States.  Then it flashes backward in time, seeing him graduate, then being a child, then being in his mother, then his future mother as a woman on a train (and a man buying a ticket on his phone to be able to sit next to the woman on a train).

The idea this commercial works on is that the future depends on small, seemingly insignificant things that happen in life.  If that man didn't get on that train, the entire series of events that would lead to their child being conceived and becoming the president of the country would never have happened.  Well, that's technically true.  But it doesn't work the way the commercial would have you believe.

Suppose the man in the train station didn't have this phone and had no other way of getting on.  Would America not have its future president?  Of course it would.  It would just be some other guy.  There was nothing magical about that child in the commercial.  He was by no means destined to become president.  If he didn't do it, somebody else will.

I find this to be an interesting concept to work with.  How do you choose a  random person to do something special?  They will want to feel like they were specially chosen or destined to do what they do.  You will want to make them special, too.  And sometimes that's an ok thing to do.  But life is more random than that.  Whether life becomes exciting or boring may be a choice or it may be up to the grace of God.

Try writing two stories.  Write one where a protagonist has rises up to fulfill a position.  Then write one where the protagonist doesn't.