No regrets. A sort of contemporary life mantra, which encourages us - if not demands from us - to live life to the fullest, to experience everything and anything so as never to wonder what if. But what if wondering “what if” is crucial to our personal story, to the development of a whole, wholesome, healthy psyche and individuality?
I have come to find solace in the musings of my “what ifs” many a time. I have come to relish in the vast world of possibilities these questions offer, how maleable said scenarios are to my whims and moods, how empowering such thinking can be, how sexy the notion of the unknown really is.
And so, I often find myself at odds with what the world (or contemporary society) feeds my ambitions. “Don’t wonder 'what if’ - you’ll drive yourself insane.” “It’s a leading cause of depression, to wonder what if.” … To wonder.
1. [Mass noun] A feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar.
To wonder - to wander in one’s thoughts. To weave the threads of a thousand different possible futures into a panoply of dioramas, one more precious than the next.
What is most often deemed a paralyzing notion has most often been exciting to me. A suspenseful blink into a parallel universe, or simply an expression of pure wanderlust. What if… we’d told each other how we felt? Where would we be? What if… I’d moved to Russia? What would I be doing now? Accompanied by some element of wistfulness, knowing that these questions will forever remain questions is comforting on some level. It promises a bottomless pit of a dream, an unwritten landscape that draws my imagination, shades it and sands it into what is exclusively mine to cherish and to nurture. My what if’s make me who I am, so there's no surprise that I have no regrets in regards to the worrying, wondrous woe of what if.