Life accrues; you get to graduate high school after you do 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, in that order. If something happens in first through fourth grade so you don't learn to do arithmetic easily, that screws up 9th and 11th grade algebra and you get to college and take the simplest math you can find and then computers are invented, you have a knack for them but can't learn to program them because you didn't pay attention in 11th grade and made the decision to take simpler math in college so despite being intellectually "smart enough" you don't have enough algebra sense to be a computer programmer.

Yesterday's actions influence today's. But one has to look at today's problems and trace them back to yesterday's actions before one can learn, "well you can take college algebra and decide to study harder if you want to be a computer programmer or; "gee, your mother getting violent because you didn't do your arithmetic homework (I still see her angrily carving the huge black X across the page of problems in my textbook I was supposed to have done, with that pencil, breaking its point, and knowing she was actually carving a huge black X across what she thought of me. . .) really put a crimp on your style back then. . . what could you do now to help yourself uncrimp in that area so you can tackle being a computer programmer like you would like?