WHAT IF....... I was prettier? I was richer? I didn't have kids so young? I hadn't waited so long to have a child? I had picked him instead? I had stayed single? What if......
We all wonder if the path we are on is really the right one. Did we make the right choices? How much better would life be if we hadn't done that or if we had done more of this. It's normal to wonder. But I can save you some time, and spare you some regret... The path you are on right now, is the right path for you right now.
Those questions that start with What If and take you back in time, have no real and true answers. No one knows what would have been different in the long run. If you were prettier maybe the guy you married would have been shallow and left when the first wrinkle appeared, and you would never have said yes to the guy who goes to work and comes happily home to you every night.
If you had waited for that first child maybe you would have had a great job but no time to lay on the floor and play trucks or Barbie. Maybe you wouldn't have learned to sew cool costumes or how to enjoy that simple giggle because you became just to business.
The time for What If isn't in the past. It's a question for the future, right? Ask it now to see what tomorrow can bring. Use it to weigh what might be. But use it with cation because just like when it's used for the past, there is no one true answer.
WHAT IF..... I take that job down south and they let me go after 90 days? I stay at this job that pays me less but where I'm happy? My kid doesn't go to Harvard because I don't have enough saved up? My kid becomes an artist even though I saved up thousands to send him to Yale.
If you can't use What If for the past or the future, what is it good for? It's good for helping us know what to do in the now. Learning from those past questions and how they turned out, and considering those future questions and how they may turn out, gives you the tools to do what you need to do today.
Think, not worry, ahead to be sure you are comfortable with the direction you are going. You know that you can't go back because there are no do overs. You can revisit a choice and add it to your reality. You can go back to school, change jobs to one you like more, and find a new man. But you are not the same person who didn't do that back then so make sure the you that you are now still wants and needs that in their life.
