JULY 28 — There was a time when I thought the biggest decisions in life were about choosing the right university, the right career or the right place to build a future. 

Looking back now, I realise those decisions mattered for a different reason altogether: they quietly decided which memories would one day become mine.

When we think about the choices we have made, our minds have an interesting habit of wandering towards the roads we never took. 

We wonder what life might have been like if we had accepted a different job, studied somewhere else, or moved to another city. 

“What if” this; “what if” that. We become curious about the futures that never happened.

What we rarely stop to consider, however, is the future that quietly unfolded because of the path we did choose.

A couple of weeks ago, my family and I spent several days in Seoul. It was not a particularly extraordinary holiday by any measure. 

We walked more than we probably should have, got lost once or twice, escaped the afternoon heat (and unannounced rains) whenever we could, and ended most evenings wondering what’s for dinner.

Looking back, the memories that stay with me are not the ones that usually appear in travel brochures.

I remember standing near the old Hanyangdoseong city wall as the day finally started that morning. I remember buying my first warm bungeoppang from a small street stall and discovering that something as simple as sweet red bean paste inside freshly baked pastry could taste unexpectedly comforting. 

I remember trying jjajangmyeon for the first time and wondering why it had taken me so long.

One morning, my wife and I made a small detour to visit a rather ordinary flight of stairs. To anyone else, they were simply concrete steps connecting two street levels. 

To fans of Korean dramas, however, they were the location of the final kissing scene from My Lovely Sam Soon, a series that first aired more than 20 years ago and recently found its way back into conversations after being referenced in My Royal Nemesis. 

We stood there for a few minutes, smiled, took a few photographs and quietly walked away.

None of those moments had ever appeared on a life plan.

Years ago, if someone had asked me where I imagined myself in the future, I doubt I would have answered, “Eating bungeoppang on a warm afternoon in Seoul,” or “Standing on a staircase because of a television drama.”

Those memories had simply arrived. Not because I planned them; but because life, after countless decisions made over many years, quietly placed them along my path.

Perhaps that is what we often overlook when thinking about the choices we make.

We assume that a decision only changes our destination. In reality, it also changes all the little experiences that come with it. 

The conversations we will have. The people we will meet. The places that will one day feel strangely familiar. Even the food we will eventually learn to enjoy.

Recently I met an ex-student who had changed her mind about what she wanted to study.

What first seemed like an uncertain detour eventually led her to another degree programme, another group of friends and, years later, an opportunity to spend time in Korea as part of a student exchange.

And one winter morning, she reached out her hand and caught falling snow for the very first time.

I have always found that image quietly beautiful. Not because snow is rare to Malaysians (although it certainly is); but because that moment began long before she boarded the aeroplane heading to Incheon. 

It began on the day she decided to take a different academic path. I doubt that, at the time, she imagined her decision would one day lead to a snowflake melting gently in the palm of her hand.

We spend so much time wondering about the memories we might have had if we had chosen differently, that we forget to appreciate the memories that only this life could have given us.

On the same note, perhaps there is another version of me somewhere, living another perfectly meaningful life. Perhaps he travelled to different countries, met different people and collected different stories.

I wish him well, to be honest. But as for me, I rather like this one.

It is the life that gave me morning walks beside Hanyangdoseong and later a photograph on an old staircase with my wife, warm bungeoppang on a Seoul street, a bowl of jjajangmyeon and bibimbap shared with my family, and the quiet reminder that every meaningful choice carries not only the weight of what we leave behind, but also the gift of what we never knew was waiting.

Maybe that is why, these days, I spend less time asking whether I chose the right path.

Instead, I find myself becoming increasingly grateful for the memories that only this path could have made possible.

* Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, the Director of UM Press, and the Principal of Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College, Universiti Malaya. He may be reached at nahrizuladib@um.edu.my