We live in a world of ‘What if(s)?”

Every single day, we’re given so many different decisions, some as minor as what to eat or which side to sleep on. The decisions we make affect us all the time, even, perhaps, days later.

We live in a world of ‘What ifs?’ where we sometimes find ourselves regretting decisions we took, or didn’t take.

What if I had gone on that date?

What if I had gotten this degree instead of the one I have?

What if I had this for lunch instead?

We regret what we didn’t do, and we regret not knowing the outcome of a different decision. It’s in our nature as adaptable, ever-changing people that we want to know everything. When we get asked to do a task, we find ourselves asking ‘Why?’ because we want to know why our energy is being wasted. We send probes into space and submarines into the sea because we want to know. Because, despite all the regret we feel when we didn’t do something, the question of ‘What if?’ also spurs us towards discovery. A man looked out at the open sea in the 14th century and asked himself, ‘What if?’ and we discovered the earth wasn’t flat. Someone looked up at the stars in the night sky, and asked themselves ‘What if?’ and now we have the Hubble Telescope.

It’s ok to have regrets, because it can drive us to do things differently the next time around, and to discover new things. New paths we didn’t take the first time around. Instead of living with the constant regrets of ‘What if?’ we should be doing something about it. Instead of internally beating ourselves up, we should be pushing ourselves toward these new paths.

Like I said, humans are naturally curious, and we want to know everything, so let’s go find out everything.

Let’s use the question of ‘What if?’ like it should be used. A tool to motivate instead of a weapon we use to strike ourselves down.