What If?

It seems to be following me around a lot lately.

It all started about a week ago when my roomie asked the first one. “What if…? Do you think there would have still been the same outcome?”

And as soon as the answer was out of my mouth, I knew there was no stopping the What If wildfire that was about to descend upon our lives—because we had to ask M to find out her response.

The rest of our Thursday night was spent shooting off various What If’s about the past, the present, and the future. At dinner on Saturday, amongst a large group of hungry college students, the What If game re-emerged, this time focused on religion and politics.

Then, procrastinating the completion of the mountains of homework that was unloaded upon us all, the Park Crew and I stepped once more in front of the What If firing squad on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, back to the original topics from the week before.

I always find myself sitting around, daydreaming What If’s up for myself and answering them in my mind, but I’ve never really discussed them with a group of people.

The biggest thing that I have learned from this week of What If’s is that there are typically two sides to the whole entity of questioning in the style of What If. You have your Let’s leave the past the past/I can’t predict the future-ers (AKA as the logical folks) and then you have the Oh well, let’s talk-ers.

I tend to fall into the Oh well category. I don’t think that questioning the past—how one moment could have changed the outcome of your life—is a bad thing. It doesn’t mean that I have things that I regret or things that I want to change; rather, I just like to think about how the past has made me the person that I am today. I like remembering the lessons I’ve learned over the past 19 years no matter how big or small.

I also love to think and daydream about the future so there’s no biggie there discussing the hypothetical's either! There’s just something about good, thought-provoking questions! (You definitely learn a lot about others around you with a round of What If’s!)

Now, on the opposite side of the spectrum you have the Let’s leave the past the past/I can’t predict the futuer-ers. The lovely M tends to fall into this category, she being her logical self and all. While she tends to hate not love, all the What If’s, she does play along like the good sport she also is. She likes to live in the moment, not dwelling on the past, choosing to let the future unfold before her. And there’s something quite admirable about that.

Like most things in life there are two sides to nearly every thing—just like this. And we can take away so much from these varying opinions, beliefs and feelings.

I know that just from these past seven days, I have learned so much about those around me and have been surprised to find how my opinions have changed over the course of my life and even just since starting college.

So which side of the What If spectrum do you fall on? Or do you make up a third category? Let me know—I’d love to hear! :)