One of my favorite sayings is “in another life.”

Statements that slip out of my lips with this starter typically pay homage to a part of me that I never thoroughly explored — or a passion I’ve lost. Other times, I say it to think wistfully about the opportunities I’ve never gotten to explore.

“In another life, I’m a professional pole vaulter,” I say, referring to my failed high school pole vaulting career.

“In another life, I’m a Tumblr girl living in 2016 Los Angeles,” I laugh, when my friends poke fun at my music taste that, unashamedly, has never left the 2010s pop scene.

“In another life, I’m actually good at physics,” I muse, wondering how I could be so good at math but terrible at the concept of rotational kinematics.

It’s not that I wish I were something else. I don’t wish to be anyone different from who I am now, because the person I am now is the greatest version of myself I can envision.

I don’t really wish for another life, because in another life, I’m not the person I am in this one.

It’s weird to think about. If I really had been any other version of myself, the person I am today would be entirely different.

We exist in our present situations because of a collection of oddly specific decisions and occurrences that have led us to this very moment. Everything we’ve ever encountered has led us to where we are now, and that is an unfathomable idea at its core.

With every decision we make, every path we take and everything that happens to us, we open a new realm of opportunity. We counter numerous forks in a multitude of roads and leave behind decisions that could’ve altered our realities entirely.

There are versions of ourselves in parallel universes living completely different lives from us in this lifetime. There’s a version of me that’s exploring opportunities I’d pushed away back in middle school and a version of me that is going to college in a different state or a different country entirely.

In a different life, we have different hobbies, friends and experiences. In a different life, we turn out completely different, despite circumstances that may be similar.

Sometimes, I like to sit back and think about the person I would be if I hadn’t made certain decisions. If I had spent more time focusing on my musical talent, would I have continued playing the piano and violin? If I had taken different classes in high school, would I have majored in something else in college?

The film “Everything Everywhere All At Once” explores this exact topic, and Michelle Yeoh’s character Evelyn unlocks the various versions of herself in the multiverse where she is a successful movie star, a teppanyaki chef or a rock in a world that cannot sustain life.

In this movie, Evelyn ventures through universe after universe, discovering the vast differences between each timeline she lives in. A series of supercuts reveals she has been every version of herself possible, and that her life can end up completely different because of a split-second decision made at any point in time.

Just in the past two months in Boston, I too have faced a series of quick decisions and impulsive actions that have shaped my college experience thus far.

It is because I decided to attend a soccer game that I now have terribly planned weekends and post-lecture lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays with the same group of friends.

It is because I took a chance and ventured into the very crowded recreational section at Splash that I found community in my niche clubs — Quiz Bowl and Mahjong Club.

It is because I spontaneously submitted that internship application that I got to meet my coworker and soon-to-be co-columnist, Ava.

The odds of everything falling into place like this are extremely slim, and yet I’ve been able to meet all the people who have made these past two months truly wonderful.

My life this past October is built upon a litany of decisions I’ve made. Without them, I would be living an entirely different first semester of college as an entirely different person.

There are so many universes in the abyss of time and space. Being in the right one, where I can meet all the people who have changed my life for the better, is truly the greatest universal anomaly.

In another life, I’m the product of what-ifs and wishful thinking.

In this one, I’m everything I have done and will do.

I wouldn’t trade it for another life in any other universe.