We’ve all, at one time or another, probably started sentences with these words:
What if…?
If only….
So short, so simple, so similar, but oh-so hugely different. To begin a sentence with, “What if…?” is to do more than pose a question. It is to throw open wide the window to a world of possibilities and alternative outcomes. It doesn’t suggest that what currently exists lacks merit; it invites consideration of what might have been or what could be.
What if I had chosen a different college and not come to southwest Michigan? What if we had moved south rather than stayed in Michigan when my husband and I were married? What if we had had children?
To ask “What if…?” also welcomes creative thinking and teamwork. Spoken within a group of open-minded engineers, architects or software designers, for example, “What if…?” says it is permissible to consider the seemingly impossible.
On long car trips many years ago, after books and keep-busy projects would no longer hold our interest, my parents would draw us into a game of “What if…?”
Their questions ranged from the silly to the serious. What if all the birds flew upside down? What if horses began to bark? What would you do if you were stranded on a desert island and all you had with you was a mirror and a match?
The game became not just a way to make the miles pass but for my parents to help us develop our imaginations and critical thinking skills.
To begin a sentence with the words, “If only….” is to feel an anxious heaviness come over you and with it the certainty that something has gone terribly wrong and there is no going back.
The feeling is worsened with the knowledge that what happened or is happening could have been avoided. And the anxiety is heightened at times when you are powerless to do anything to ease its severity or stop it completely.
If only they had taken away his keys and someone had driven him home. If only she had seen a doctor when she first found the lump. If only I could be there to help them through this difficult time.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “What if…?” and “If only…” in relationship to world and local events.
What if everyone in the world stopped hating and killing one another and worked to make life better for one another? What if, instead of destroying the earth to feed our wasteful ways, we honored the earth, and in so doing found the happiness we crave? What if every decision made and every action taken whether by the most powerful corporate mogul or the lowliest layperson began with regard for whether it is honest and of positive benefit to the greatest possible number of people and the environment?
But even as I consider these questions, I know, regretfully that “If only…” is sure to follow. Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place not because of people who do evil, but because of good people who look on and do nothing about it.”
Every day there are marvelous opportunities to act on “What if….?” and prove to those who watch and wait that we have the maturity and ability to rise above past problems.
None of us truly wants to one day say, “If only….”