The What If's
It’s an empty feeling, as if I’m missing or lost something. It’s the realization that we are, at best, living only a tiny fraction of our lives. It is often simple things – I could have gone here first, before going to work – or a life-altering decision – what would have happened if I hadn’t moved here?
We are living only a slice of life, one filled with mistakes, knowledge and joy but what if I lived another slice or chose another path? How would I be different?
An idle thought that often drives me insane and starts me on a frantic search for a time machine.
Christopher Bowns
Aug 6, 12:21 PM
Ha! You’ve finally stumbled across my tormentor, the same as your title, the “What ifs”.
To put it in perspective, imagine a giant fractally generated tree, such as the one you get by doing a Google Image search on [fractal generated tree].
Now imagine your death as a dot on the far end of a branch stemming from the millionth iteration of the tree.
The rest of the tree is what you could have done. Your measly little path to your death-dot is how it played out.
There’s a lot of choices to be made, but be happy with the ones you do make. Don’t regret the paths you missed; there’s too many choices ahead of you to fret over the ones long gone.
Thame
Aug 6, 12:36 PM
I agree although I don’t feel sad, it’s more of a curiosity. I wonder what I would be like, how I would be different if I went somewhere else.
Arghhh!
[ARB1D3_[00L3R
Aug 6, 10:07 PM
Did you ever see the movie, “Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Curse of the Black Pearl”?
Jack Sparrow: “The only rules that really matter are these:
what a man can do and what a man can’t do.”
That’s the trick of it. Most people don’t succeed because of fear of trying, and when they do they give up after the first failure.
John Lennon said, “several hundred songs hit the floor
before the first song we liked…”
Only 12% of Ronco’s patents ever made a profit.
Win by velocity, love.
If you try a million things, one is bound to stick,
and if ya lose…it’s just practice.
ps. this site is the SEXIEST use of css I have
ever seen.
Tom Martin
Aug 8, 04:40 PM
I am plagued by that as well, but I really do think that Christopher and [ARB1D3_[00L3R did a good job saying what I had in mind.
“What if…” is what oft keeps me awake at night. That is when I’m most contemplative, and it takes me a long time to wind my mind down (unless I spend an hour before hand in meditation, which I rarely am able to do due to the noise level in this household). “What if I hadn’t moved out of my dad’s two years ago… What if I had said something instead of holding my tongue…” They are nice excercises of the brain, I think, and are essential to who we are as a person.
Just think, if we never reflected on the past like that, would we have learned from our good – and bad – choices as well as we have? I’d like to think that if I wasn’t plagued by “What If’s”, I most likely wouldn’t have chosen the path that has taken me to where I am today.
And as much contemplating as I do about it, I would not want to go back in time and change things. It just gives me the shivers. I probably wouldn’t be here right now, or have the same friends, or have the same habits. It gives me the shivers because of the Chaos Theory – more specifically, the Butterfly Effect. (Looking for the wikipedia article, I stumbled across a Butterfly Effect 2… I hope they do a good job with the movie.)
I could go on with one “what if” in my head for days on end, having to stop only before I feel like it’s going to drive me into madness. I find it enjoyable to think about it, especially if it invades your dreams (quite strange experiences in themselves).
If time travel were possible, I would be afraid of our future as a race. So many people jumping in time, it would be chaos. And to think that, what if Hitler had the time machine technology? Or what if a present government had it, and used it to alter the past to gain favor in the future? Think a corrupted version of the cops in Minority Report.. that alone would make me shiver. Things could quickly be 1984-like, or worse. Those are more “what if..” thoughts that pass through my head. Our future instead of past.
I find it all intriguing and scary at the same time. There are so many possibilities. And with that, I am going to end this comment before I continue to blather on about it. :D
Tarun
Aug 9, 02:20 AM
Finding a time-machine would be horrible (think ‘The Butterfly Effect’ but not nearly as simple because a fractal goes on into infinity).
What if? + Nostalgia = No sleep and a lot of regret
Alex Z.
Aug 9, 04:32 PM
What if… is a question that is pondered by all curious and broadly thinking minds, but the problem of such questions in their broad sense, as discussed on this page, is that they do nothing but breed frustration because they consider the possibilities of the past through alteration of events that cannot (for the better) be changed. Because even the smallest alteration of the past could have limitless possibilities in their effects later on, making any sort of hypotheses is impossible.
Thus, it is futile to consider such things. But do not misunderstand me in my statement. We should not ignore the past; in fact it should be studied very meticulously, but not to know what to do, but rather what not to do.
Because we do know our actions, and their effects up until this point, we should look to the past as a sort of guide book for future decisions and not as an endless maelstrom of possibilities, probabilities and false conclusions.
aequam servare mentem
Renee
Aug 10, 08:35 AM
It seems to me that we ask that question too little; “What if?” Only when things go wrong we see the alternate paths we could have taken. It’s good to think about it more though. It reminds us of our luck ánd our freedom.
Thame
Aug 12, 12:52 PM
The problem of such questions in their broad sense, as discussed on this page, is that they do nothing but breed frustration because they consider the possibilities of the past through alteration of events that cannot (for the better) be changed.
It reminds us of our luck ánd our freedom.
Very true, the questions come violently and leave me feeling very trapped and small. I think I actually feel less free because I see so many options and paths in front of me, yet I follow the one in the center usually beacuse of uncontrollable events.
[ARB1D3_[00L3R
Aug 21, 01:21 PM
Wow! “What if” has really taken off!
Don’t you think that it is strange that this page has been more successful than a lot of peoples’ careers? (lol).
Besides, control of “destiny”(or whatever) is fool’s errand.
Supose I cloned you (your DNA, chemical makeup, yeah?), and took your clone back in time, replaced you with your clone.
Do ya think yer clone would live it’s life any different than yours, or would it be carbon-copy?
Same choices, same DNA, same life. Period.
“but what if I lived another slice or chose another path?”
...simple…there isn’t one.
So the answer be this. There is only one life, yours.
Make it a good one.
Loves,
[ARB1D3_[00L3R
ps. lovin yer “recent work”. Good stuff.
pragya
Aug 27, 11:11 AM
cant believe the entire world thinks in the same manner.since a very long time i have been pondering on this question due to a decision i took 2 years back…i really cant stop wishing that i had done something different than what i actually did but i think the only and only reality is that that in the given past circumstances if i am given even a 1000 chances i would do the same thing again and again simply because of the kind of person i was at that time.it just could not have been any other way and there must obviosly be some blessing hidden in it which i simply cant see at the current moment.another important aspect is that even if my wrong decision makes me really sad now it has made me more mature and enriched as a person and i believe the highest goal of a person’s life is knowledge so i really cant complain. i would conclude by saying what i really believe in ‘learn from your past,take control of your present so that you dont repent in future’
Craig
Aug 30, 05:00 PM
The choices you have made and the experiences that have resulted of them are who you are. Would you give up who you are, and what you have become so easily just to get the chance to see what if? would you give up the uniqueness of your path just to see what could have happened? I know i would not. Life is a short one-way street, and we have to cram as much into the trip as we can. there’s no time for regrets. I say live the life you have.
j
Aug 30, 08:54 PM
what if… aliens are actually humans from the future that have evolved into what we portray as big headed, muscleless creatures with black eyes that pierce the human imagination. What if they (we) created the idea of God. Makes since considering that we’re always thinking we’re so smart. like were the hell did mathamatics come in? (sorry for jumping off track.)
Spencer
Sep 10, 08:00 PM
Straying from my more serius side…
Perhaps the need for the pre-human to count how many blueberrys he or she had gathered produced the simple need to count. Whenever the concept of storing came around is when they would have had the need to add. Pre-humans probebly stored foods for themselves, would gather more, and then have a desire to know the amount they had after. Thus forms adding- the basic form of mathmatics. Later on in more complex siuations, they would have realized that to form other ways of mathmatics would greatly reduce the burdon of adding bare numbers to eachother- Perhaps creating multiplying.
“Time” itself may be questioned.
What if time is not simply a unit of mesurement? This is a question of mine. On which basis was the idea of time concived from? In other words where did intelectual lifeforms get the concept of time from?
Rshharrison@yahoo.com is my e-mail Someone spark an idea for me please.
amy amraoui
May 4, 08:05 AM
i am always haveing the wha if problem i feel worried and angry abot lot’s of thing i could have done and i wonder what would i be doing today if i had done that or hadn’t done that.
this site has helped me a lot in my invetigation.
amy
xxx
luvin u 4eve
07 13 years of age